Ethnic Platforms: Ethnicity as Base or Barrier?


Yijia Zhang, University of British Columbia

There is growing research examining the disparate impacts of technology on racialized groups. In the context of the platform economy, researchers find that allegedly liberating platforms could exacerbate inequalities and discrimination experienced by people of color, who are disproportionately dependent on platforms. In contrast, the same platforms afford opportunities for affluent white families to profit from their assets. Less attention has been devoted to the impacts of digital technology on ethnic groups where entrepreneurial, professional, and gig work associated with platforms is performed by members of the same racial/ethnic community. For example, in recent years, Vancouver, Canada has seen a growing network of Chinese-language platforms offering services such as food delivery and ride-hailing. Most of these platforms started in alternative forms, such as websites, chat groups, or subscription accounts in the Chinese all-in-one platform WeChat. Even when in the form of applications, participants in fieldwork note that the platform design strongly reflects Chinese-ness. Drawing on my ongoing dissertation fieldwork following these ethnic Chinese platforms in Metro Vancouver, this paper examines how Chinese migrants and other stakeholders perceive ethnicity around these platforms, and how such perceived ethnicity shapes the growth, or barriers to growth, of these platforms. I have interviewed over 70 entrepreneurs, employees, gig workers, users, and clients engaging with ethnic Chinese platforms. In addition to tracing how these platforms surface in urban spaces, I conducted digital ethnography, exploring the virtual spaces these platforms created and tracing their design evolution over time. To contextualize the findings in broader Canadian society, I have also tracked local and national coverage of these ethnic platforms, documenting the discursive contexts where these platforms operate, start off, and, for some, disappear. Preliminary results show that, for these platforms in Vancouver’s Chinese community, ethnicity defines them in salient and nuanced ways. Entrepreneurs transplant what they believe to be the best innovations from their home country to Canada, supporting transnational migrants and bringing convenience to everyday life in Canada. However, at times, such transnational, entrepreneurial spirit may be checked by local regulations. For users, although language and the ethnicity of the majority user base define the ethnic character of these platforms, ethnicity gives away at less expected moments, such as flashy promotion announcements. It is these less visible moments that reveal the platforms’ ethnicity. Depending on co-ethnic users and gig workers familiar with the platform business model before it was available in the host country, these ethnic platforms witnessed fast and strong initial growth. Some platforms even expanded into other Chinese communities in Canada, the United States, and other high-income countries. The strong ethnic character that vitalizes these community initiatives, however, may also inhibit them from further fruition. For example, when leading ethnic platforms attempted to move beyond the Chinese community, they encountered immense difficulties. The platforms tailored their interface design to the aesthetics of a particular group of translocal users, which local users not exposed to that culture-specific interface found challenging to navigate. The ethnic reputation of these platforms also produces assumptions that they do not come with official-language options. The social imaginations of these ethnic platforms prevent them from being less centered around a particular ethnic community. By bringing together platform research and sociological scholarship on ethnic economy, this paper aims to contribute to the ongoing discussion on how race/ethnicity is interwoven in the production, consumption, and communication of everyday technologies such as platforms.

This paper will be presented at the following session: