Re-Configure and Resist Temporal Boundaries in the Gig Economy: Time, Digital Platforms, and Urban Space for Online Food-Delivery Workers

• In Event: Disrupting Algorithms: Innovating Work and Life in the Digital Economy - III

Abstract

Digital platforms used to facilitate on-demand service provision have attracted considerable scholarly interests in the past few years, but few has paid attention to how the so-called “just-in-time” labor force navigate the algorithm-controlled labor process from the perspective of lived time. This paper examines how on-demand service workers on digital platforms make and live their time, in the context of China’s online food-delivery industry. Far from treating it as a pure control device determined and imposed by algorithms, the authors consider the delivery time as a contested terrain for temporal and labor politics. Based on an ethnographic study, the paper details how multiple forces intersect to set various temporal norms and demands for riders: the capitalistic logic that shapes the normal routines of urban living and the platform designs, the government’s policy orientations, and the riders' membership of migrant workers and the associated historical and structural precariousness. The paper also demonstrates how the riders configure and shift the boundaries of those intersecting temporal orders by re-contextualizing their temporalities in mundane but counter practices. The article fills an important research gap by addressing the under-explored yet essential temporal dimensions in the expanding “just-in-time” labor force.

Authors

• Yujie Chen, Faculty of Information, University of Toronto

• Ping Sun, Institute of Journalism and Communication, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences