It’s All About Quality Time

Systemic Hurdles in Continuing Education among Night-Shift Food Delivery Riders in China

Abstract

This article examines how night-shift food delivery riders in Hangzhou, China, experience continuing education while working under algorithmically organised platform labour. Based on eight months of critical research fieldwork, including 380 hours of observation across 47 night shifts and 28 interviews with 22 riders, the study argues that educational marginalisation is not adequately explained by a general shortage of time. Riders often had fragments of clock time, but much of that time could not be used for learning because it was interrupted by orders, difficult to plan, out of step with educational institutions, or they were physically exhausted by night work. The article develops the concept of educational time poverty to describe the condition in which formal educational opportunities exist but cannot be converted into sustained learning capability. Bringing Sen’s capability approach into dialogue with Lefebvre’s rhythmanalysis, the study shows how platform rhythms, bodily recovery, family care, income pressure, and institutional schedules interact to shape adult learning. Riders understood education in several overlapping ways: as a route out of delivery work, as a postponed possibility, as a test of self-discipline, as a risky investment, and as a promise blocked by structural conditions. The article contributes to adult education research by shifting attention from access alone to the temporal conditions that make access usable.