The gig economy, platform work, and social policy: From on-demand food delivery to the platform-mediated care work in Hong Kong

Digital technologies pose many new challenges to work and employment relations, in which the platformisation and gigification of work fundamentally reshape labour market institutions. Based on a qualitative study on food delivery and platform-mediated care workers in Hong Kong, this paper unpacks how varying platform infrastructures redefine the process, competition, and quality of work. While the food delivery work strongly relies on algorithms to automate hiring and co-monitor workers’ performance with customers’ ratings, care platforms use communication apps to maximise the pool of manpower that boosts the fungibility of care services for clients’ immediate needs. The findings reveal that platform works are differently embedded in particular technological settings, service sectors, and policy contexts, despite their similarly deprived occupational welfare. The platform-mediated care work demonstrates more complicated tensions between platforms, workers, clients, and the state, calling for attention to platform-worker power asymmetries and regulatory dynamics in the state-subsidised care market.