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Compressed Time, Mobile Labour: Sociotemporal Regimes of Chinese-run Platforms in Australia
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Compressed Time, Mobile Labour: Sociotemporal Regimes of Chinese-run Platforms in Australia

Tingting Liu, Lutfun Nahar Lata and Yiran Liu
Journal of Sociology, Online First
2026
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/14407833261445206
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Abstract

Platform labor, sociotemporal order, time precarity, digital platforms, gig economy, migrant labor Article reuse guidelines: sagepubcom/journals-permissions
This article examines how Chinese digital platforms export tight temporal governance, characterised by algorithmic urgency, work intensification, and short-term monetisation, into Global North labour markets. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork (2022–2025), it analyses two Chinese-owned platforms operating in Australia: Bigo Live, a livestreaming platform, and HungryPanda, a food delivery platform serving Asian diasporic communities. Rather than treating Australia as a uniformly protected labour regime, the article approaches it as a typical Global North dualised core–periphery system, where stable working conditions are concentrated within a protected core while peripheral workers face increasing time insecurity, despite a broader discourse of fairness and protection that is not consistently realised in practise. Within this context, Chinese platforms extend domestic labour practises across borders and amplify pre-existing forms of time insecurity, along with racialised understandings of international labour, through platformised govern-ance, algorithmic incentives, and migration precarity.

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