Precarious Migrants in a Sharing Economy| The Rise of Platformed Governance in China: Migration, Technology, and Integration

Abstract

Despite considerable scholarship on the platform economy and digital labor, studies that interrogate the intersectional relations among platforms, migration, and social integration remain scant. Utilizing food delivery platforms as its subject, this article demonstrates how platforms serve as key sites for recognizing and performing migrant workers’ economic integration. It develops the concept of platformed integration to argue for the rise of a platformed governance model in China's digital economy, wherein the platform leverages its legacy among migrant laborers through multilayered intermediaries, digital management, and embedded infrastructure. This platformed integration, as demonstrated, addresses how migrant workers in China conceive and experience top-down digital infrastructures of labor platforms in terms of tactical negotiations, and how this ultimately shapes their livelihood opportunities in class-divided cities.