Who are the gig workers? Evidence from mapping the residential locations of ride-hailing drivers by a big data approach

Abstract

One of the challenges faced in understanding platform gig work is who are the gig workers involved in this novelty labour relationship. We attempt to answer it by using mobile phone trajectories to map the residential locations of gig drivers in the ride-hailing platform economy in Chengdu, China. Then, we reconstruct the relationships between the spatial structure of the ride-hailing drivers and their neighbourhood-level sociodemographic characteristics and residential built environments. We found that ride-hailing drivers are more likely to come from neighbourhoods with lower-income and less regular job opportunities. Their residences formed living clusters with urban villages, resettlement houses, and shanty towns. Our study suggests that ride-hailing platforms do not liberate gig workers from the structural rural-urban disparities but form a continuation of the structural barriers and discrimination in the division of labour, even if the technological innovation discourse in the platform economy argues that the gig driving can attract the well-educated and other minorities.