Migrant Labour in the Gig Economy The Intersection of Migrant Labour, Platform Capitalism, and Resistance

This message condemned the mistreatment of Black and brown workers and criticised Ocado’s purported ethical stance on equality and diversity. The demonstration drew widespread support, particularly from migrant and BAME workers who had been dismissed after investing in environmentally friendly vehicles. The focal point of the protest was the rejection of Ocado’s disingenuous portrayal of itself as an ethical company, particularly in regard to environmental and diversity management issues.

The anti-Ocado Zoom campaign represented an opportunity for collaboration between IWGB and other non-union organisations, such as civil society associations and the activists of Black Lives Matter London. As the interviewee—a rider and unionist committed to demanding the rights of ethnic minorities—testified, the collaboration with Black Lives Matter became continuous and structural because the union was extremely attentive to social groups that suffered extreme forms of discrimination, and the Black Lives Matter network found in it an interlocutor consistent with its objectives:

We have gotten a lot of support for various campaigns from… so, like, Black Lives Matter is one of the bigger ones I’ve been talking with. So, I’ve written articles for them in the past, just on the topic of like anti-racism in the UK […]. And so where IWGB kind of like browses in, I think, is on having like a really close relationship with the workers themselves, who all experienced these different forms of repression, kind of mostly through their labour. […] And so, I think that what is kind of valuable for these organisations […] It’s very useful for us as well because like they have a larger kind oflike media presence, than we will.

The collaboration with Black Lives Matter, a highly structured network in the UK, allowed the IWGB to strengthen social alliances that enabled it to amplify the voice of the protest and thus influenced public opinion with respect to the core issues they were dealing with, while at the same time helping to support the objectives of the partners with whom they formed alliances, which in this case were civil society associations and Black Lives Matter especially.

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6 Discussion and Conclusions

In this chapter, we focused on the forms of collective organising of migrant and BAME platform workers by looking at the specific case of the independent union IWGB, the main organisation in the UK currently dealing with the collective representation of migrant and precarious work. In doing so, based on the data gathered during our ethnographic research, we showed that the observed forms of organising were built both within and outside the union. Our analysis is therefore in line with the debate on the ‘organising model’ that is increasingly being adopted by unions to reach underrepresented categories of workers, and migrant workers in particular, to build alliances with other collective actors (Holgate, 2005; Milkman, 2000), represented mainly by civil society associations and co-ethnic networks supporting migrant workers (Martin, 2010; McBride & Greenwood, 2009). In the context of platform work, this approach is carried out in particular by independent unions, which together with grassroots groups were the first to organise food-delivery riders in Europe (Borghi & Murgia, 2024; Borghi et al., 2021; Leonardi, et al., 2019; Tassinari & Maccarrone, 2020).

In our study, first, we analysed the main characteristics of union action both in the phase of approach and interlocution with migrant and BAME platform workers and in the processes of active integration of the same migrant workers into the union structure in correspondence with specific struggles and protests. Second, we showed how, during specific struggles and campaigns, the independent union in question acted by building bridges and links with other organisations capable of supporting and sustaining the claims of migrant workers. In doing so, we noted how IWGB was able to effectively capitalise on the expertise it had developed in representing precarious migrant labour in other contexts, such as cleaning, gaining visibility and reputation that allowed it to initiate a dialogue with food-delivery platform workers. Reputation and visibility then gave way to a long interlocution that allowed it to define shared objectives with migrant and BAME workers through a democratic process that included and defined common demands, starting from the real needs expressed by workers. This involved a long process of mediation and mutual recognition by the workers with their needs and by the union with its own experiences and practices. This meant taking workers’ claims seriously, even when they were not in line with the union’s expectations. This contribution is therefore also an invitation to open a structured reflection on the need to set up flexible and shared representation strategies with migrant and BAME workers, capable of redefining union expectations to standardise migrant workers’ claims and to understand their specific needs linked to both working conditions and biographical trajectories. Indeed, as Alberti and colleagues (2013) suggest, the false dichotomy between labour and migration issues must be deconstructed, not least to open up new shared meanings and spaces for collective organising.

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The case of IWGB in the context of migrant platform labour shows how the dense and largely hidden work of interlocution can succeed in opening up democratic processes of inclusion and collective claims. To overcome inter-ethnic fractures, often instrumentalised by the digital labour platforms themselves, one of IWGB’s main strategies was to support co-ethnic networks and then extend struggles to all union members regardless of migration background. In addition, the systematic work of connecting with civil society associations and organisations such as Black Lives Matter helped to reconnect labour conflicts with social conflicts. Indeed, the alliances thus constructed aimed to question, and thus challenge, labour exploitative practices that are functional to the reproduction of the social status quo and racialised labour markets (Alberti & Sacchetto, 2024). This case study shows that the inclusive and democratic practices of collective organising of migrant and BAME workers contribute to restoring an overall meaning to work, understood as a form of emancipation.

References

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Migration, Precarity and Solidarity Among Migrant Platform Workers in China’s Food Delivery and Ride-Hailing Sectors

Yang Zhou

1 Introduction

Like anywhere else in the world, China has in the recent years saw a steady growth of a large body of gig workers in its various service sectors. Official statistics show that until 2022, around 84 million worked in China’s platform economy, mainly in ride-hailing, courier service, food delivery and logistics.¹ While no precise figures are available, several survey reports show that most of these workers are rural-to-urban migrants. For example, a 2021 report by International Labour Organization shows that nearly 80% of Meituan’s² riders previously worked in manufacturing, construction, mining, transportation, catering and accommodation sectors that were once dominated by rural-to-urban migrants. The figure is slightly lower, but still significant in the case of Didi, which is around 65% according to the same report (I Zhou, 2020). In general, these workers have relatively low level of education, typically graduates of high and vocational schools, although since the pandemic, more and more people with higher education degrees took these jobs due to the bleak labour market condition. Geographically, while in the case of exportoriented manufacturing, most migrant workers concentrated in cities of China’s industrial heartlands like Shenzhen, Guangzhou and Shanghai, platform workers did their daily grinds in both industrial heartlands and industrial peripheries.

_Y. _Zhou ₍B₎

CHAPTER 8

¹ https://www.acftu.org/xwdt/ghyw/202302/t20230228\_825484.html?7OkeOa4k= qAk.rqkRgB\_5Ttirn2uVzJdJKQNF4OtOpuvNkA4nEOlqqmxJcxFDqAqqgG.

Department of Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China e-mail: yangzhou@ln.edu.hk

© 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\_8

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As has been shown by numerous studies, news reports and surveys, labour conditions among these migrant gig workers are precarious and backbreaking, characterized by intense exploitation, high risks of sexual assaults and occupational injuries and diseases, and a lack of employment protection, which only worsen as leading platforms secured market leadership (Chen et al., 2020; I Zhou, 2020). In daily management, riders and drivers, legally designated variously as independent contractors, selfemployed or dispatched agency workers, are subject to the dual pressure of algorithmic systems and human managers that systematically favour platform and customer interests over theirs. Despite high risks of work injuries and occupational diseases, most of them are not covered by the occupational injury insurance scheme, not to mention other forms of social protection and public services like education, healthcare, housing etc..³ Finally, there is little space for skill upgrade, career development as well as little space for them to air their own voice, in managerial decisionmaking related to price-setting, commission deduction, service standards, and reward and punishment system. Under this condition, if, as ILO’s report cited above shows, riders and drivers enjoyed relatively higher—yet unstable—income than local wages before the pandemic, this was because they had worked for excessive hours. For example, a 2018 survey showed that 30% food couriers worked for more than ten hours each day in a week (Wu & Li, 2018). The condition only got worse since 2021, as the much-anticipated post-pandemic economic recovery did not materialize. In my post-pandemic trips to Shenzhen and Guangzhou, riders and drivers frequently complained that they now needed to work for even longer hours to get less income. They frequently used ao’shijian, enduring time, to describe their work, because they needed to work for 4–5 more hours to earn the same amount as pre-pandemic times. Many reported working for 12–16 hours a day. Some even slept on their cars during the night.⁴ Pervasive overwork has severely damaged the health of drivers and riders. Occupational diseases like backpain, prostatitis, sexual malfunction, and heart attack are commonplace. Even cases of sudden death in cars were not rare.⁵ Official statistics on such fatalities are nonexistent. Yet according to E-hailingHeadlines, the WeChat portal of a Guangzhou-based legal and repair service provider for ride-hailing drivers, and several other channels of its kind, more than 50 drivers were reported dead in their cars in 2023 after prolonged periods of overwork. Given EhailingHeadlines relies on its fans for news resources, which is around 80.000, it is plausible to say that across the country, the actual number of such cases can only be higher.

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² Meituan is China’s largest food delivery platform. It forms a duopoly with its largest competitor, E’leme in China’s food delivery market.

³ This is even so given the state’s recent move to institutionalize gig workers’ social protection, by decoupling social protection from employee status. Under this new regulation, a centralized work injury fund was set up for all gig workers to apply in cases of injuries, alongside a platform-instituted commercial insurance. For other social protections, gig workers are made eligible to pay for their own social protection scheme, which are too costly for many.

Squeezed to the extreme, migrant gig workers are not docile bodies uncapable of resistance. In their daily work, they constantly co-create labour algorithms and mutual aid communities to make the labour process more bearable (Sun & Chen, 2021; Zhou & Pun, 2024). In addition, they also leverage collective actions to push management and government concessions (Lei, 2021; Liu & Friedman, 2021; Zhao & Luo, 2023; Zhou & Pun, 2024). Notably, since 2017, China Labour

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⁴ Ride-hailing drivers sleeping on their cars has frequently made it to national news headlines in the past two years. for example, https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail\_forw ard\_25832815; https://www.thepaper.cn/newsDetail\_forward\_27561020.

⁵ Official statistics on such fatalities are non-existent. Yet according to E-hailing Headlines (网约车大事件), the WeChat portal of a Guangzhou-based legal and repair service provider for ride-hailing drivers, and several other channels of its kind, more than 50 drivers were reported dead in their cars in 2023 after prolonged periods of overwork. Given E-hailing Headlines relies on its fans for news resources, which is around 80.000, it is plausible to say that across the country, the actual number of such cases is higher.

Bulletin’s strike map has documented a total of 567 collective actions among food delivery riders, and more than 170 cases among ride-hailing drivers, which represents at best a tip of the iceberg.

To date, existing studies to understand this dialect of precarity and resistance tend to take the labour process approach (Burawoy, 1979; Gandini, 2019; Smith & Thompson, 1998) and locate platform workers’ precarity in the realm of the immediate labour process. It has been argued that algorithmic management is the main factor behind platform worker precarity. By algorithmic management scholar denote an algorithmic system that is constantly fed by labour process and user data to automate workforce direction, evaluation and discipline (Kellogg et al., 2020; van Doorn & Chen, 2021). Main mechanisms of algorithmic management include automated order dispatching, automated evaluation and rating, dynamic pricing and information asymmetries, among others. The goal is to produce just-in-time and just-in-place labour. In addition, customers are invariably granted organizational power of direction, monitoring and evaluation over workers to laundering control (Y Zhou, 2020), further supplemented by subcontractors or third-party labour intermediaries (Li, 2021). Finally, these control mechanisms evolve over time, depending on the platform’s desire to increase profit margin, the changing institutional environment and the expectations of financial capital. All these arrangements are found to be able to socially, legally, spatially individualize workers, thus accounting for various forms of precarity outlined earlier.

In the meantime, this largely technology-enabled, dispersed form of labour process arrangement and individualization paradoxically also offer platform workers free space to associate, through both social media and offline interactions. As a result, like platform workers in Europe, in China they have strong associational power (Joyce et al., 2023; Zhou & Pun, 2024). Apart from mild forms of mutuality and contingent agency, riders and drivers also resort to more confrontational collective actions. Insofar as platforms rely on riders and drivers to deliver orders, this very simple fact gives them strong workplace bargaining power against the platform and third-party agencies. In moments of resurgence, platform workers’ strong associational power can translate into strong collective workplace bargaining power, to pressure management and government concession. Research further noted that the very marketplace flexibility platforms tap into, also gives riders stronger marketplace bargaining power, i.e. even though when the unemployment rate is high, workers can still switch between different platforms easily, thus reducing their reliance on certain platforms while enhancing their collective power of resistance (Liu & Friedman, 2021; Zhao & Luo, 2023).

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