{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title":"Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9783031912610","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","id":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","uuid":"ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title":"Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance","normalized_title":"migrantlabourinthegigeconomytheintersectionofmigrantlabourplatformcapitalismandresistance","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9783031912610","isbns":["9783031912610","9783031912627"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":270,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Migrant%20Labour%20in%20the%20Gig%20Economy%20The%20Intersection%20of%20Migrant%20Labour%2C%20Platform%20Capitalism%2C%20and%20Resistance","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32/search"},"page":{"printed_page":224,"pdf_page":233,"physical_index":233,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"28ea890961f10a8dd7623e29f318ca2544c4699ee58524131c83c2f66cd58f25"},"chapter":"Dynamics ofVirtual Work","content":"A remarkable incident in recent years is the pandemic, which brings about enormous impact on societies across the world. In China, stringent measures of pandemic control were implemented for two years, which basically putting the domestic economy to a halt. Without a job, many could only rely on their savings and debts for a living. When the pandemic control measures were lifted, small and medium enterprises that employ the largest number of China’s workforce did not bounce back. Despite that the state issued various policies and launched various campaigns, the level of confidence was low among private capital. Globally, advanced economies actively promoted de-coupling from the Chinese market, and as a response, the Chinese government emphasizes the domestic circulation while actively pursues markets in the global South, with limited achievements. The effect on the domestic labour market is that unemployment is surging within China. As a result, even more people pour to ride-hailing and food delivery sectors, reinforcing these modes of differentiation and exclusion and deepening migrant platform workers’ precarity.\n\nIn China, the analysis of precarity in relation to algorithmic management has led some to propose the establishment of a three-way mechanism, comprising of the platform (its managers and engineers), platform workers and the government, to co-design algorithmic management mechanisms. The idea is to design a more worker friendly algorithm so that workers can fare better on platforms. The analysis in this chapter raises the question, if migrant platform workers’ extremely precarious conditions have to do with not only algorithmic management, but to migration-related modes of differentiation, what kind of algorithmic management can help workers overcome the structural pressures brought to them by the structural changes in the labour market and in the provision of basic medical and educational services? I also wonder, if platform companies are there to survive and thrive in market competition, how much space they really have to make the concession, even they are made to do so by state regulations? I am pessimistic about this, because of the sharp contrast between corporate/state power and labour collective power in China where the latter has always been weak and its development has always been systematically repressed throughout the reform. Drawing on the analysis above, I argue that the government needs to play a role—in a way accountable for the workers—in addressing the structural conditions in labour market and in public service provision in order to really improve workers’ conditions. In this connection, hukou reform is an important point of intervention. The current strategy of hukou reform that is, to use Duckett’s term, essentially neoliberal—as I have shown, only add salt to injury. A more useful strategy should try to remove dual citizenship while in the meantime guarantee the equal provision of social security and public services. This is, of course, not an easy task, especially given the entrenched interest pattern of social security provision (province-based, favouring urban and public sectors) formed since the reform, as well as the enlarging deficit in China’s social security funds and medical insurance funds. The ongoing reform related to gig workers is also pretty much in line with the neoliberal strategy. Whether there is space to push the hukou reform to a different direction is worth future research.\n\n224\n\nY. ZHOU","previous_page":223,"next_page":225}