---
schema_version: "library-reader-v1"
source_type: "original_book"
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"
library_document_id: "ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32"
source_sha256: "47c7c08da0933a56a20193e0938b4f864c4eee2c4d93e47abe99898e2ac4b485"
pdf_physical_page_count: 270
pdf_physical_page_index_base: 0
range_start: 230
range_count: 10
html_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32?start=230&limit=10"
markdown_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=230&limit=10"
previous_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=220&limit=10"
next_url: "https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=240&limit=10"
---
# Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance
> 页码规则：PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX 是从 0 开始的权威文件物理页索引；PRINTED_PAGE 是页面中识别出的印刷页码，可能为空，二者不得混用。
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=230 | PRINTED_PAGE=221
First, being a migrant is instrumental in helping platform drivers overcome individualization and build association. Platform drivers were scattered around the city without a geographically bounded workplace in their daily work, as the algorithmic mediation of their labour process is antithetical to social connections and trust ties among them (Ferrari & Graham, 2021). Yet being a migrant provides drivers a starting point and a solid basis to restore social relations and trust ties amid work. This is because although theoretically anyone can recruit her/himself as a driver simply by registering on the app, in reality, for many full-time drivers, this is more complicated, as they need to learn more about labour conditions on platforms, and to decide on where to operate and which vehicle leasing agency to rent car from etc.. These are important for them because they need to make sure they can make the best of the job to earn enough for their family. In this connection, because their lack of advanced skills and urban hukou status, they have no formal channels to find relevant information. Even though they have been migrating to the city for a long time, they still can only rely on the own laoxiang and peer networks they have accumulated in previous work experience. In addition, my interview with recruitment personnels from vehicle leasing agencies similarly shows that they also rely on their existing drivers’ laoxiang and peer networks for recruitment and in daily management, more effectively.
8 MIGRATION, PRECARITY AND SOLIDARITY AMONG
221
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=231 | PRINTED_PAGE=222
Entering the sector in this way, although no strong trust ties can be guaranteed, it nevertheless can bring social relations of migration back in the labour process that otherwise tries to extinct social relations as such, thus providing the basis for drivers to build social relations and associations that in turn form the basis for solidarity. In my fieldwork, drivers form among themselves both offline and online groups, which revolve either around gathering points or vehicle leasing companies. In both types of associations, the formation and sustaining of such groups are strongly mediated by drivers’ laoxiang and peer networks, although relations in those revolving around gathering points were often closer than those revolving around vehicle leasing companies. In a given city/area, these two types of groups were often interconnected, by nodal drivers, again through laoxiang and peer networks ties.
Second, being a male migrant also significantly shapes the drivers’ collective framing of their grievances, diagnostic or prognostic. Specifically, when discussing their grievances before action, the way they invoke and frame their experience always highlight their identity not just as workers (in relation to employers), but also male migrants. For example, they would constantly complain that they have limited access to social security and social support in cities; they were discriminated against by urban passengers which is insulting and unbearable for them as men. When mobilizing, they constantly frame resistance of exploitation in terms of defence of dignity, and they believe that they should do so because this is what is required of being a real man: ‘men should be courageous and far-sighted to act in the face of humiliation and injustice, regardless of the results’.
The third way being a migrant plays a role in their solidarity and collective action concerns the process of mobilization. In moments of insurgence, laoxiang and peer networks, and their interconnection with each other—however weak the connection might be—allows the strike information to be disseminated as wide as possible across the city. More importantly, the close groups drivers developed among themselves based on laoxiang and peer networks provide strong trust base in the organization of action and initial mobilization, which is especially important when there were widespread concern that spies from Didi and VLCs might infiltrate, and the political risks of collective actions under the increasingly repressive political environment is high.
222
Y. ZHOU
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=232 | PRINTED_PAGE=223
7 Discussion and Conclusion
This chapter examines the relationship between migration and precarity/ solidarity among platform workers in China. It contributes to the growing body of literature on China’s fast-expanding platform workforce, by highlighting the continuing relevance of these workers’ migratory status in shaping their experiences of precarity and solidarity. In existing literature, curiously, this important dimension has largely been ignored. In addition, by identifying and analysing three distinct modes of differentiation, it also enhances our understanding of the relationship between migration and platform workers’ precarity and solidarity in general.
The findings suggest that platform workers in China, predominantly consisting of rural-to-urban migrants, are subject to three distinctive modes of differentiation in the labour market. The skill-based mode of differentiation is mainly the product of China’s recent economic restructuring, where digital and intelligent technologies are used to reorganize the production, circulation and consumption processes of the economy. In this process, the demands of skills in labour market in China also changed, with newly emerging, higher-paid jobs often requiring specialist knowledge and skills that migrant workers do not have the literacy, time or resources to acquire. Skill-based differentiation thus effectively excludes migrant workers from these jobs and channels them into platform-based service jobs, not least because its labour process design allows a high-level of flexibility through which migrant workers can earn higher income (than most of the jobs they can find in the labour market) by ‘aoshijian’. The other two modes of differentiation, hukou-based and gender-based, then push migrant workers to work as hard as they can, by pushing them to conform to gender roles and by increasing their life expenses, especially when after hukou reform, the citizenship barrier was lifted, and social welfare and public service provision became even more marketized—as a result, migrant workers now are lured to believe in a better future in urban cities. It is largely these three modes of differentiation, plus the flexible design and exploitative managerial practices of digital labour platforms, that lead to pervasive overwork, to death, an extreme form of precarity, among migrant platform workers.
Though being a migrant imposes constraints on these predominantly male migrant workers and limit their agency in relation to the changing landscape of labour market and the rising platform power, it simultaneously contributes to their shared grievances, and allows them to reclaim social connections and trust ties with each other in the otherwise individualizing work environment. The same gender norms that push them to migrate and work excessively also enrages them in face of the daily inequalities and indecencies they have to confront, and provides them with strong motivations to fight back collectively. Finally, in a time of heightened corporate and political surveillance, the connections based on migrant networks provide a safe/free space for migrant platform workers to organize and mobilization, among the wider driver/rider community.
8 MIGRATION, PRECARITY AND SOLIDARITY AMONG
223
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=233 | PRINTED_PAGE=224
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.
In 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.
224
Y. ZHOU
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=234 | PRINTED_PAGE=225
Another point of intervention my analysis points to is skill upgrade. The government can provide more support for skills upgrading ofmigrant workers. In this respect, China has a good institutional foundation based on which a lot can be done: in fact, the Chinese government has long been committed to providing skill training and upgrade for ordinary workers through labour authorities such as the Ministry Human Resources and Social Security and its local bureaus. It has also encouraged private capital to provide related training courses. In other words, a skill upgrade infrastructure that involves multiple players and sectors is already in place. The question, then, is why, as my preliminary interviews have indicated, this infrastructure seems to have not been able to benefit migrant workers, and what can be done to change the situation. Further research can be conducted to map this skill upgrade landscape and explore why migrant workers have difficulty benefiting from it. These analyses can inform reforms in skill upgrading and help address the problem of precarity.
Finally, the analysis in this chapter about how migration—while perpetuating precarity—simultaneously enable association, connection and solidarity among migrant platforms workers also point to another possible form of intervention, namely solidarity economy. This is especially important in a time when collective actions are politically sensitive, if not impossible at all. In fact, my fieldwork in the past several years in Guangzhou and Shenzhen reveals that some worker-led small platforms are emerging. They are exploring new, alternative forms of organization and operation in the platform economy, pretty much in the spirit of the fast-expanding platform co-operativism/commons movement across the world (Scholz, 2023). These bottom-up practices may be small and vulnerable to commercial encroachment, but they nevertheless bear the seeds for an alternative platform future where we can labour with decency.
8 MIGRATION, PRECARITY AND SOLIDARITY AMONG
225
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=235 | PRINTED_PAGE=226
References
226
Y. ZHOU
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=236 | PRINTED_PAGE=227
8 MIGRATION, PRECARITY AND SOLIDARITY AMONG
227
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=237 | PRINTED_PAGE=228
228
Y. ZHOU
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=238 | PRINTED_PAGE=229
8 MIGRATION, PRECARITY AND SOLIDARITY AMONG
229
## PDF_PHYSICAL_PAGE_INDEX=239 | PRINTED_PAGE=231
Transversal Unionism: Resisting and Navigating a Neoliberal City Through Identity and Labour Power
Dipsita Dhar , Ashique Ali Thuppilikkat , and Soham Bhattacharya
1 Introduction
This city doesn’t treat us as their own, yet they also know they can’t survive without us. So we do what needs to be done, do your job with honesty and unite where you see you are being wronged. Both have to be done together, continuously.
Ali Jabbar, a migrant gig worker organizer, December 2023.
CHAPTER 9
D. Dhar (B) Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India e-mail: dipsita.dhar@gmail.com
A. A. Thuppilikkat University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada e-mail: ashique.thuppilikkat@mail.utoronto.ca
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2025 F. Della Puppa et al. (eds.), Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy, Dynamics of Virtual Work, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-91262-7\_9
231
下一段：[继续读取](https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/ce325a04-5bc9-4819-a776-439d90410b32.md?start=240&limit=10)