Barbara Orth

University of Bern & Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space

Visiting Toronto Metropolitan University

Winter 2026

Barbara Orth is a Postdoctoral Researcher with the Digital In/Justice Initiative in the Department of Geography at the University of Bern, Switzerland, and an affiliated researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space in Germany. Her work sits at the intersection of migration studies, feminist political economy, labour geography, and digital technologies. Her dissertation, Venturing Beyond the Gig: A Migration Regime Perspective on Platform Labour (Freie Universität Berlin, 2024), examined how migration policies and experiences shape the conditions and subjectivities of platform workers. Barbara holds degrees in International Relations (University of East Anglia) and Refugee and Forced Migration Studies (University of Oxford, full scholarship). Before her PhD, she worked with non-profit organisations in international development and migration. Her research has been recognized with the Feminist Economic Geography Best Paper Award (2022) and the Society for Socio-Economics PhD Researcher Award (2022).

Research focus while a Bridging Divides Future Leaders Fellow

Her research explores the intersections of migration, digital technologies and labour. During her time at Bridging Divides, Barbara will compare existing data sets from Germany and Canada to compare how different migration regimes shape the experiences of platform workers. In collaboration with Professor Anna Triandafyllidou and Laura Lam, she plans to co-author a comparative study on migrant platform labour. Alongside this, she will advance my postdoctoral project on refugees as data workers, conducting preliminary fieldwork to better understand the invisible labor that underpins artificial intelligence systems.

Selected publications

Orth, B. (2025). Forging mobilities, becoming ideal workers? Temporary migration and the gig economy. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2025.2467176 (external link)

Stingl, I., & Orth, B. (2024). Becoming “Platform Workers”: A Biographical Exploration of Temporary Visa and Worker Subjectivities in the Gig Economy. International Migration Review, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/01979183241299717 (external link)

Orth, B., & Baum, F. (2024). Researching Care Platforms: Methodological and Ethical Considerations in the Broad Field of Domestic Platform Labour. Critical Sociology, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/08969205241280360 (external link)

Orth, B. (2024) “Stratified pathways into platform work: Migration trajectories and skills in Berlin’s gig economy”. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 56(2): 476–490 https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X231191933 (external link)