In April 2022, Shanghai, a metropolis in the eastern coast of China with over 25 million residents, underwent a strict city-wide lockdown as part of its national zero-COVID policy, a set of government strategies implemented by the central state in attempts to contain the spread of the Omicron virus. During this two-month lockdown, low-waged migrant laborers across the city were kept from performing the types of work upon which their incomes relied. Some migrant construction workers, for example, were confined to the construction sites without adequate food and water. Food delivery workers were forced to sleep along the streets, for fear that they would come in contact with family members or close friends to whom they could potentially pass the virus, or from whom the virus could potentially pass onto them. Meanwhile, elderly populations who did not have access to food, grocery, and other delivery apps were left without life-saving medication, food, and other daily necessities.

The 2022 lockdown in Shanghai demonstrated to observers around the world the societal and economic effects of policies that effectively immobilized laboring (migrant) bodies that were key to the circulation of labor and capital in the emerging gig economy. One significant consequence was the emergence of mutual aid that filled in the gaps of digital economy, drawing public attention to invisible populations who were made vulnerable or were left behind from the accelerated rise of the digital economy. This essay takes the theme of this Hot Spots series, “Where have all the workers gone?” rather literally by narrating the immobilization of laboring migrants from the circulation of commodities, services, and capital. This case study demonstrates, I argue, the ways in which non-capitalist forms of collectivity and mutual aid facilitated by social media apps, served to fill in the gaps left behind by the emerging digital economy in China when laboring bodies were no longer mobile. This observation, in turn, highlights the need to recognize the ways in which collectivization and mutual aid, even if they were initiated online, undergird the practices of waged labor in today’s digital economy.

In February 2022, Shanghai had undergone a series of localized lockdowns, as well as the closing of malls, restaurants, and schools in response to the rapid spread of the Omicron variant. The rhythms and practices of ordinary people’s everyday lives were recorded and surveilled by the state via digital applications in individual mobile phones. These apps, which were designed to surveil, trace, and report the movement of people and presumably the virus, were mandated by local authorities as a requirement for residents to move across public spaces within the city boundaries one year prior. Residents used these apps to geographically trace those who had tested positive based on public reports and digital apps that mapped out and contact traced the movement and activities of people who had tested positive within the past fourteen days.

Two months later, Shanghai entered its lockdown, prompting fears that other cities would follow suit. Stories of mutual aid and growing concerns for the wellbeing of migrant residents and laborers entered public awareness across WeChat and other social media apps. Ironically, some of the very same digital apps that were used to surveil and regulate people’s mobility were also used to help family, friends, and neighbors.

Residents who lived in the French Concession documented several instances where they found migrant construction workers forced to quarantine without adequate food and water in the partially completed construction sites where they worked. Concerned neighbors voluntarily brought food and water to these migrant laborers. One couple had publicly posted their WeChat account IDs on the front gates of their apartment building, in hopes of assisting the elderly who did not have mobile phones to buy food and household supplies online. While some community residents voiced complaints against management officials who illegally hoarded government distributions of food and supplies, one volunteer, a former Google employee, designed a digital database listing donations of medication, food, and other household supplies available for the elderly and other economically vulnerable groups who faced shortages of food and other essential items. One news story told of a male community volunteer who had overstrained himself distributing food and supplies to residents in one community to the extent that he had a massive heart attack. Other stories included neighbors who used hangers, ropes, laundry rods, and even towels to create makeshift pulleys, so that they could wire food and other essentials to each other through their apartment balconies and windows.

These online reports brought awareness and concerns about the working conditions of migrant laborers, including street sanitation workers, building cleaners, hotel attendants, and express delivery workers, to audiences across social media sites. Some bloggers who wrote under pseudonyms shared reports of cramped, sub-standard living conditions of migrant laborers in Shanghai, including Xuhu urban village at the margins of the city. Their shared apartments were so dense and unsanitary that migrant residents could not adequately quarantine and maintain social distance. Many were unexpectedly evicted in the middle of the night, sparking protests on the streets before migrants were ultimately forced into centralized quarantine sites or in modest hotels. Other media reports revealed that migrant laborers who constructed makeshift hospitals and quarantine sites had to work over twenty hours a day.

The events surrounding the April 2022 lockdowns in Shanghai show how non-capitalist forms of collectivized care and mutual aid undergird the rhythms of life and livelihood that make waged labor possible. When workers, including the flows of services and capital, became immobilized, improvised relationships of mutuality and care among neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers entered into public awareness filling in the gaps left behind by the emerging gig economy. These encounters of care show how definitions of labor as primarly tied to the boss-employee relationship via wages tend to overshadow other forms of sociality that serve, in many ways, as the bedrock of mutuality and survival for vulnerable populations. These stories highlight the need to reimagine labor beyond the employer-employee relationship in order to account for unexpected moments of mutual aid not only among friends and neighbors, but also among aquaintances and strangers. These moments may help to actualize communities of care that are more sustainable in the long-run.