Be my boss: Migrant youth and the contradiction of hope labour on Kuaishou

Abstract

This article explores the platformisation of a popular short-video platform Kuaishou and its impact on Chinese migrant youth. Based on 4 years of field observations, this study examines how Kuaishou’s platformisation process has paradoxically empowered and constrained the agency of migrant youth through the construction of ‘hope labour’. This hope labour seeks to benefit from Kuaishou’s attention economy at the expense of growing uncertainty and precarity. In particular, with the intervention of the state and fierce market competition, Kuaishou’s operation is moving towards a Douyin model to attract more urban youth, resulting in less diversity and more uniformity. This article illustrates how the joint forces of the market and the state push the platforms towards increased homogeneity. It shows how Kuaishou configures a digital assembly line for migrant youth, reproducing the precarious hope that everyone can become his or her boss.