Contractual restriction, business model, and institutional support: The multilevel configuration of platform-mediated care work and care precarity in Hong Kong

Abstract

While on-demand care platforms have recently emerged as a “techno-fix” to the global care crisis and related labour shortages, the associations of the care platform economy with welfare states and social policies remain under-studied. This article presents a qualitative study of 36 workers engaged in care platforms in Hong Kong (HK), an extreme case of productivist welfare in East Asia. Informed by existing institutional analyses of welfare regimes, business systems, and platform economy, this study adopted a relational approach to examine the multilevel configuration of HK’s platform-mediated care. The findings revealed that care platforms, as digital intermediaries, imposed contractual restrictions on workers and generated uncertainty in everyday care work relations. The business models and digitised scalability of the platforms offered fast and immediate care services, yet the quality and reliability of care were not guaranteed under cost-based competition across platforms. Regarding institutional support, the ‘gigified’ care market and care platform work were enabled by HK’s residual welfare regime, liberal labour market, and marketised family care model, with limited social and labour protection. Although the government’s voucher system and outsourcing strategies facilitated the care platform economy, the low-cost policy approach to care also limited its expansion. This article makes two main contributions. First, it examines how the corporate logic of care platforms leads to work and care precarity, challenging the ‘uberisation’ of care. Second, the analysis of multilevel configuration links the development of platform-mediated care to institutional settings, moving beyond a micro focus on digital affordances.