"We are just after the company": tactical resistances of (racial minority) gig workers in Hong Kong

This paper examines the variegated “precarities” that migrant food delivery workers faced, as well as their tactical agencies in the Hong Kong context. Through findings from quantitative surveys and in-depth individual and focus interviews, it discusses how the “racial aggression” they experienced exposed the deeply entrenched racism in post-colonial Hong Kong. The paper then discusses the conditions for the tactical agency among migrant (gig) workers to engage in collective actions against platform injustice, especially at a time when the government had just stipulated the National Security Law in 2021. The paper argues for the “solidarity capital” of migrant gig workers, as opposed to the resident minority counterparts, which enabled them to organize public protests and mobilize online and offline connective resistance. The unprecedented “worker victory,” albeit liminal, that the migrant Pakistani leaders achieved, demonstrated some migrant solidarity resources that are often under-estimated. The paper hopes to contribute to the burgeoning interdisciplinary scholarship on migration, labour, media, and social movement studies, to articulate more nuanced forms of migrant gig labour solidarity resistance, in increasingly authoritarian politico-economic junctures in Asia.