Data analysis in this chapter draws mainly on my fieldwork in the Pearl River Delta area, since 2020, mainly using ethnographic observation and in-depth interview. Two phases of fieldwork are carried out. The first phase lasted for 10 months between 2018 and 2019, during which period I stayed in an electronics factory and its nearby villages in Dongguan and Shenzhen. Initially, the goal was to understand migrant workers’ mediated work and life experiences amid the rapid digitalization of the Chinese economy. In this process, I carried out 46 in-depth interviews with worker-turned-Didi drivers, recruited through (1) snowballing from factory colleagues; (2) drivers’ WeChat groups; (3) reaching out directly at gathering points, each lasting for 1.5–2 h. In addition, I spent time with the drivers as they went through daily routines, observed their WeChat groups, participated in their regular meetings, and followed them in their collective actions.
The second phase was carried out between 2020 and 2023 in Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Nanjing and several small cities in Guangdong and Jiangsu Provinces, where I mainly carried out in-depth interviews with riders and drivers, with more than 40 interviewees. These interviewees were mainly recruited via connections with drivers and riders in Dongguan and from gathering points and charging stations in Shenzhen, Nanjing and Guangzhou. Most interviews lasted from 0.5 to 2 hours and centred around their experiences of precarity and practices of resistance and solidarity making.
To sum up, this chapter draws on my ethnographic fieldwork, and around 90 in-depth interviews with riders and drivers, over a period of a few years. This provides solid basis for some preliminary systematic analysis of the relationship between migration and platform workers’ precarity and solidarity, while offers the possibility to delineate some temporal trends. Most of the interviewees aged between 20 and 50 who originally came from different provinces. Many were married with 1–4 children. The majority of them previously held rank-and-file or lower managerial positions in manufacturing and service sectors, ranging from assembly line workers and supervisors, small vendors and retailers, to those in sales and catering, all typical precariat migrant groups in China (Swider, 2017). This is consistent with the demographic pattern of Didi drivers in China as identified in corporate and NGO reports.
Full verbatim transcripts of interviews and extensive field notes were prepared for detailed analysis of the ways in which migrant drivers were locked in precarity, the structural conditions and circumstances leading to their predicament the impact of these issues on their well-being, as well as their feelings and responses.
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