Ecosystems of Fragility: Feasibility of Platform Worker Cooperatives in Fragile Contexts.

Michelle Lee’s report asks why platform worker cooperatives remain so rare in fragile contexts, especially among refugees. Rather than treating ownership as a simple fix, Lee shows how displacement, legal precarity, weak financial access, limited institutional support, and global competition make cooperative formation extraordinarily difficult. Refugees may benefit from worker-owned platforms, but the conditions needed to build them—capital, trust, legal stability, technical infrastructure, and client networks—are often missing. Lee calls this an “ecosystem of fragility”: a web of state, market, and institutional barriers that keeps workers marginal. The report argues that accountability, not only ownership, should guide fairer models of platform work.

Lee, Michelle. Ecosystems of Fragility: Feasibility of Platform Worker Cooperatives in Fragile Contexts. New York: Institute for the Cooperative Digital Economy, 2026.

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