Platform Labour and Contingent Agency in China

Abstract

The impact of digital platforms upon the employment structure and work conditions has attracted widespread scholarly attention. However, research on workers' agency and subjectivity in the platform economy is relatively under-explored. Using fooddelivery workers in China as a point of departure, this article provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed account of delivery workers' agentic performances. We utilise the notion of contingent agency to capture the expedient, ongoing, and variegated measures developed and manoeuvred by workers to exercise agency from their structurally vulnerable position in the labour process and employment relations. While agency in practice is always contingent and never static, we conceptualise the notion by unpacking the multiple factors that have shifted the ground for workers and hence contributed to the contingency, to shed light on the interplay between workers' agency and the unstable and elusive character of platform capitalism. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of workers' contingent agency for labour politics.

The emergence of algorithmic solidarity: unveiling mutual aid practices and resistance among Chinese delivery workers

“…Individual gaming tactics adopted by riders mentioned below are used to resist the platform to avoid competition with other riders. Our findings further refine the results of previous studies (Sun, 2019; Sun and Chen, 2021) about Chinese riders’ gaming tactics. First, Chinese riders indeed work for multiple platforms at the same time .…”

“…In addition to these tactics, Sun and Chen (2021) indicate that some riders would install bots to bypass certain platform-imposed restrictions or to help them get higher-paid orders. However, all interviewees in this research mentioned that they had heard of cheating bots (these bots can help them to change their GPS positioning, or freely choose higher-paid orders, etc.)…”

“…These practices point to the existence of a new type of algorithm-mediated solidarity that this article will disentangle in its constitutive dynamics. The exploration of the forms of algorithmic solidarity and resistance among Chinese riders will contribute new knowledge to grasp the ways in which people engage with algorithmic media in everyday life, re-evaluating their ability (agency) to collectively act on algorithmic power (Sun and Chen, 2021; Velkova and Kaun, 2019).…”

Humanizing the posthuman: Digital labour, food delivery, and openings for the new human during the pandemic

“…The differences are that most of their care work is devoted directly to the food orders and only indirectly to the customer humans; and that they are under more omnipresent algorithmic control that treats riders as non-human objects like drones or robots. This creates a unique tension, within which riders cultivate 'contingent agency' (Sun and Chen, 2021) and play their role in the cultural shaping of crisis via public discourse as well as everyday practice.…”

“…The scrutiny of and control over riders are meticulous, with AI taking over the decision-making power, which results in not only high-intensity work pace and subsequent burnout (Chen and Sun, 2020) but also sometimes egregious commands, such as the notorious case of Chinese platforms directing riders to violate traffic rules and putting them in harm's way, in some cases causing fatal accidents (South China Morning Post, 2017). Yet, despite direct managerial dominance over the work process, food delivery companies continue to refer to riders as 'partners', 'freelancers', and 'selfemployed' (Sun and Chen, 2021;Wood and Lehdonvirta, 2019) in order to evade social responsibilities and reduce cost for platforms (not for riders or society at large).…”