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This study examines the working and living conditions of migrant riders in the food delivery sector in Italy, Poland, Spain, and Ukraine, addressing three guiding questions: (1) What conditions do migrant riders experience? (2) What factors explain these conditions? (3) How effective are existing policies in protecting them? The analysis draws on a comparative qualitative design, including over one hundred interviews, focus groups, field observations, and national reports produced through a harmonized research framework. Despite significant differences in migration regimes and labour regulations – what we have defined Italy’s dual‑track system, Poland’s contractual bricolage, Spain’s regulated exclusion, and Ukraine’s legal vacuum - the findings reveal a strong convergence. Across all four contexts, migrant riders face persistent and structural precarity, characterized by legal ambiguity, unstable and inadequate income, informal or intermediary‑mediated access to work, weak enforcement, and limited social protections. This cross-country alignment is explained by three interconnected dynamics. First, the expansion of platform food delivery coincided with major waves of migration, creating a structural match between platforms’ demand for flexible labour and migrants’ urgent need for income. Second, fragmented and insufficient regulatory frameworks systematically channel migrants into irregular or semi-formal arrangements, regardless of national differences in legal design. Third, platform business strategies - subcontracting, self-employment schemes, algorithmic control, and the strategic use of legal loopholes - actively produce and entrench precarity. The growing role of intermediaries, from formal fleet partners to informal account holders, often operating in legal grey zone, further deepens dependency and exploitation. National regulations offer limited protection. Even ambitious reforms, such as Spain’s Riders Law, fail to reach migrant riders operating informally or under subleased accounts. Across countries, the state’s regulatory capacity consistently falls short of countering the structural vulnerabilities created at the intersection of platform business models and migrant labour. Overall, the evidence shows that national regulatory differences matter far less than expected. A transnational pattern of exclusion emerges, with platforms able to exploit legal and administrative gaps in ways that transcend borders. These findings carry important implications for ongoing European debates on platform work and highlight the challenges the EU Platform Work Directive will face in improving protections for migrant riders.