Paper short abstract:

Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese online ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders, this paper critically examines platform workers' nuanced perceptions of precarity and their coping strategies. The research explores what is important and what gives their lives a sense of purpose.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to investigate the impact of digitally-mediated platform work on individuals’ daily lives, labour practices, and social relations by focusing on online ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders in China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from July 2018 to September 2022 in a small city in southern China, this research attempts to challenge existing theories in platform work studies and to destabilise the critique of neoliberalism in the West. Existing studies on platform work mainly centre on labour precaritisation and exploitation, technical and algorithmic labour arrangements and control, and the legitimacy of platform work. This body of literature regards neoliberalism as either an economic system or a form of governmentality. Moreover, these studies view digital platforms as new means of control, depicting platform workers as victims of oppression and subjects of governance. My ethnographic research, however, suggests that platform work offers hope rather than mere deprivation. The overemphasis on the ‘dark’ side of platform work indicates a disengagement from the subjects’ nuanced understandings of precarity. Many studies concentrate solely on workers’ experiences on a specific platform, disregarding their broader life experiences; subjects are often reduced to being mere living sources of economic value. To address this issue, this research employs the life history method to critically examine the impact of platform work on individuals' life experiences. Based on my ethnographic research, individuals participate in platform work not only to make ends meet, but also to pursue freedom, happiness, and new meanings of life, and to fulfil familial obligations.