Migrant precarity can be understood in terms of structural condition, but experiences of precarity simultaneously create possible rallying points and harbinger novel strategies and discourses for resistance (Waite, 2009). This has shown to be the case among immigrants in advanced capitalism (Ness, 2005). In China, migrant workers are not docile and diffused mobs who do not feel part of a solidaristic labour community. As hukou and gender render them more precarious, this same key mode of differentiation also shapes their collective actions to negotiate precarity, by, for example, forming self-organized cooperative groups and participating in strikes (Chan, 2010; Fan & Xue, 2017).
To sum up, migrant precarity is relational, context dependent, contested by the state, capital and migrant workers themselves, and mediated by certain modes of differentiation. It designates structural conditions of neoliberal dispossession while provides a platform for contention and reclaiming commons. In China, migrant precarity has long been part of the state’s development strategy and mediated by hukou and gender as two modes of differentiation. The gig economy developed in China amid profound political and economic shifts. How, then, does these politics of precarity and solidarity unfold for migrant gig workers?
3 Method
To answer these questions, this chapter focuses on two platform-based gig sectors, namely, food delivery and ride-hailing. They are chosen because they are epitome of the gig economy in China. Like many other gig platforms in China, they both emerged against the larger backdrop of post-2008 economic downturn. Both quickly gained market leadership through financial power. And they share similar legal, technological and managerial arrangements with other gig platforms, setting low threshold for entry, defining drivers as independent contractors, and relying on an algorithmic management and a delicate balance of crowdsourcing and outsourcing models for daily operation and labour control. Particularly relevant here are that both sectors employ a large workforce, among whom most are migrants, and that like gig workers elsewhere, the expe rience of migrant drivers and riders is a mixture of precarity, indecency, anger and frustration. Sudden deaths are not uncommon, while numbers and scales of driver collective actions increased over the past years. All these promise rich insights into the research question raised.
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