Description
While digital technologies are increasingly applied in the delivery of social welfare, the platformisation and gigification of work generate new risks and reshape labour market institutions. The platform-mediated care, referring to the digitised intermediaries matching service requesters and providers via Apps or websites, has recently emerged as a ‘techno-fix’ to the global care crisis. This paper presents a qualitative study of 36 care workers engaged in online platforms in Hong Kong (HK). Adopting a relational approach, this study investigated the multilevel configuration of HK’s platform-mediated care. The findings revealed that care platforms constituted positional dominance over workers and generated uncertainty in everyday care work relations. Platforms’ digitised scalability and business model created fast and on-demand care services, yet the quality and reliability of care were not guaranteed under the cost-based competition. Regarding institutional support, care platform work was enabled by HK’s residual welfare regime, liberal labour market, and marketised model, in which the limited social and labour protection paved the way for the gigified care market. Arguably, the corporate logic of platform-mediated care was incompatible with the logic of care based on trustful and long-term relations, leading to the work and care precarity. While the care platform economy was subsidised by government’s voucher system and outsourcing strategies, the low-cost policy approach to care might also constrain its expansion. This study contributes to the literature by examining how the corporate logic of care platforms impacted on care relations and linking the platform-mediated care to an institutional analysis.| Period | 9 Nov 2024 |
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| Event title | 2024 Asia Pacific Comparative Development and Policy Symposium |
| Event type | Symposium |
| Location | Hong Kong, ChinaShow on map |