| Titre | Platform Labour and Contingent Agency in China | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Ping Sun, Julie Yujie Chen | |
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Revue | China perspectives |
| Numéro | no 2021/1 Agency Beyond Precarity: Platforms and the Multiplication of Labour Regimes in China | |
| Rubrique / Thématique | Special Feature |
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| Page | 19-27 | |
| Résumé anglais |
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 food-delivery workers in China as a point of departure, this article provides an empirically grounded and theoretically informed account of delivery workers' agentic performances. We use 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. Source : Éditeur (via OpenEdition Journals) |
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| Article en ligne | http://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/11325 |
