About my project
My PhD project is about migrant food couriers in Norway. Things are happening and changing fast in the so-called 'gig economy', we talk about the welfare system, the algorithms, the management of labour, but we seem to constantly pay little attention to people who are really working for the platforms, especially those who work as food couriers with the identity of migrants.
My project is trying to understand the life of those migrant food couriers, I ask the questions mainly about:
- Why food riders are so visible in the urban space nowadays while the job itself seems still so invisible to most of the people?
- How are the migrant workers doing this job for international platforms while they are also dealing with many local issues?
- In what ways are migrant food riders mobile and immobile at the same time during their work?
My main methods will be semi-structured interviews with food riders; and bike-alongs, to bike with food riders and conduct interviews simultaneously.
If you are a food rider working for Foodora or Wolt in Norway and willing to share your stories or opinions, feel free to contact (email me or fill out this form: ttps://nettskjema.no/a/277718)!
Academic interests
- Mobility
- Urban space
- Media
- Immigrants
Background
I got my bachelor degree in journalism in mainland China, and worked as journalist and sustainable development consultant in China for some years. I finished my master program in media and communication at Lund University in Sweden.
I believe that what I am doing now for my PhD project is deeply rooted in my life experience before. I left my hometown, Chengdu, China at age of 18 years old for college, and then I went to Guangzhou and Beijing to work. In 2019 I left China and arrived in Sweden for a master program, and now I am in Oslo, Norway for my PhD. Throughout all of these mobilities all these years, one question is haunting in my mind: how does one live their life and make sense of their being in a strange place?
I was doing a part-time job at a Chinese restaurant in when I was in Sweden, and through the job, I met a lot of food riders who came to the restaurant to pick up food. I had many short conversations with them back then, and I noticed that, first, most of them are non-Swedish; second, they really had great stories to tell about their job. That was the starting point of my PhD project, I would like to know what has happened during their journeys from the restaurants (even before the restaurants) to customers, also the reasons they have chosen this job in a foreign land. Additionally, it is not so often that people can really hear stories about migrant food riders, my journalistic intuition tells me that I should do such a thing.
My mother tongue is Chinese (Mandarin), I speak English fluently, and I am trying to learn Norwegian now!