Chan, Jenny. 2023. “Buy with 1-Click: Independent Contracting and Migrant Workers in China’s Last-Mile Parcel Delivery.” The Asia-Pacific Journal 21(2): 1-18.
See also: Boris, Eileen, Heidi Gottfried, Julie Greene, and Joo-Cheong Tham, eds. 2023. Global Labor Migration: New Directions. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Abstract: This article analyzes labor informality in the Chinese platform economy. Drawing on participant observation at a parcel delivery station in Beijing, the author discusses how individual and family lives are impacted by the hectic world of logistics work, and indeed, how companies have increased cost competitiveness through driving exploitation into forms hidden within the household. Migrant family members frequently assist each other by calling customers and wrapping parcels while their unpaid labor is subsidizing the company’s business operations. Although the spheres of production and social reproduction can sometimes be integrated in cities, they confront precarious work and unequal urban citizenship.
Keywords: Independent Contracting; Logistics and Delivery Services; Production and Social Reproduction; Informality and Precarity; Chinese Rural Migrant Workers
Figure 1: A team of couriers unloads a full truck of parcels in an early morning at the delivery station. The author, pictured in blue shirt, is a trainee while conducting participant observation in Beijing. Photo provided by the author (Jenny Chan).
