Riders on the Storm
Amplified Platform Precarity and the Impact of Covid-19 on Online Food-delivery Drivers in China
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12422825 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hui Huang (0000-0002-3410-556X, King's College London, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 135 |
| Pages | 351-365 |
| Publication date | 2021-08-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Contemporary China (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1067-0564 • E-ISSN: 1469-9400 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/10670564.2021.1966895 |
| OpenAlex | W3166900997 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
The global COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately intensified the precariousness of insecure work. This article examines the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on platform-based food-delivery drivers in China, particularly focusing on labor conditions. Drawing on 52 in-depth interviews with drivers from top Chinese food-delivery platforms, this article shows that the precarity of drivers’ work and life is dramatically amplified by the pandemic, resulting in escalating work insecurity, financial instability, and subservient class identity. More specifically, drivers struggle with increased physical risks, livelihood crisis and inflamed racism. All this results from the reorganization of algorithmic labor process and management facilitated by the coalition of food-delivery platforms and Chinese states, which results in surged workload, unpaid labor, uncompensated prolonged production time and extra investment in production assets
Agriculture · Business · China · Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19 · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Food security · Geography · Livelihood · Market economy · Pandemic · Political science · Precarity · Work (physics · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Employment and Welfare Studies
The Game of Making Money
Gig Economy
Agility and Sustainability
Gig workers, critical visuality and humour in a digital context
Gig Workers and Managing App-Based Surveillance
Rethinking job dimensions
The Impossibility of Representation
Popular Media Representations of Farming
Working with algorithmic management
India’s Gig Economy Workers at the Time of Covid-19
Varieties of Gig Work
International Business - New Insights on Changing Scenarios
Effects of Job Demands and Resources on Positive and Negative Affect of Delivery Drivers in China
Securitizing the technoplatformized City
Shanghai lockdown and alienation under China’s state capitalism
Platform couriers' self‐exploitation
Algorithmic management in food‐delivery platform economy in China
We are the cavalry, on the way to the rescue’
Expendable Workers
Emotional Labor as a Situated Social Practice
A 'working lives' approach to platform work
The Food Delivered is More Valuable Than My Life
Politics of on-demand food delivery
| Unique citing works | 23 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5.75 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |