WHEN
September 17, 202612pm - 1pm
Research Webinar: Migrant Workers in Australia's Gig economy
12pm - 1pm
Food delivery platforms have become a major employer of migrant workers in Australia, offering flexibility but also creating new forms of insecurity, surveillance and exploitation.
Join us for a webinar with researchers Dr Tingting Liu (UTS) and Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata (Murdoch University) as they share insights from their research with migrant food delivery riders. Drawing on interviews with workers across Australia, they explore how platform work shapes class, identity and everyday working lives.
Meet our speakers
Dr. Tingting Liu
Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the Faculty of Design and Society at the University of Technology Sydney.
Trained as a cultural anthropologist, her research examines labour relations, workplace cultures and the changing organisation of work. Since completing her PhD, she has studied diverse occupational groups, including factory workers, civil servants, white-collar employees, female police officers, NGO workers, livestreamers and data scientists. Her current fellowship investigates a rapidly emerging labour context: the global expansion of Chinese digital platforms.
Playing the Game: Migrant Platform Riders, Class Displacement, and Masculinities in Urban Australia
Dr Tingting Liu examines the experiences of Chinese food delivery riders working in Australia's platform economy. Her research explores how migrants from middle-class and professional backgrounds navigate the realities of gig work, often experiencing downward class mobility while developing new ways of understanding work, status and masculinity. The presentation highlights how riders make sense of platform work through ideas of strategy, competition and "playing the game".
Dr. Lutfun Nahar Lata
Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University.
Her primary research area focuses on the Sociology of work and employment including the gig economy and the future of work. Dr Lata is the author of Spatial Justice, Contested Governance and Livelihood Challenges in Bangladesh (Routledge 2023). Her research has been published in a number of high-ranking international journals such as The Sociological Review, Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, Sociology Compass, Gender, Work & Organization, Cities, Geographical Research, Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Government Information Quarterly.
Navigating Algorithms: Migrant Workers, Everyday Tactics and Collective Resistance
Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata explores how migrant food delivery workers understand, anticipate and respond to the algorithms that govern their work. Drawing on interviews with 55 platform workers, she examines how workers use community and ethnic networks to share knowledge, manage uncertainty and push back against exploitative practices. Her research reveals the collective strategies workers use to navigate an increasingly automated labour market.
