Digital Intermediaries in Domestic and Care Work: Mapping Regional Differences
Chair(s): Claire Hobden (ILO), Lorena Poblete (CONICET, Argentine Republic)
The growth of digital platforms and the new types of jobs they create have attracted considerable academic interest in recent years. Even though the case of Uber has become paradigmatic, constituting a flagship of the digital world of work, the universe of digital labour platforms is vast and diverse and comprises a wide array of activities and sectors. This panel proposal is concerned with digital labour intermediaries that provide services to households, which have been gaining ground in recent years, especially those that offer cleaning and care services.
Unlike the more widely studied platforms of passengers transportation or delivery services which tend to reproduce a single scheme worldwide –one that has been associated with job extreme precariousness and disguised labour relationships– digital intermediaries in the domestic and care sector present a much broader range of business models (and therefore, of impacts on workers). These indeed can include “uberised” models with very similar features and outcomes to those of traditional platforms. But they also involve different types of digital intermediation, where companies’ intervention is focused on the phase of connecting workers with households/clients (and, eventually, in setting initial wages and labour conditions). Other variants of digital intermediaries in the sector may comprise platforms that hire domestic workers as their own employees and even cooperatives of workers which deploy some of all of the digital tools proposed by labour platforms.
Although in the last years a growing body of literature on the topic has contributed to generate information on this diversity, there is still a need to understand the expansion of this phenomenon in more detail, for example by mapping where and how these new digital intermediaries operate. Additionally, comparative studies are still scarce and scattered. Indeed, analysing the contrasts of different business models in the sector and taking into account their national contexts (including their diverse regulatory, social, demographic and economic environments) would greatly contribute to understand why and how these dissimilar designs of digital intermediation in the domestic and care sector develop and what their effects are.
As a first step to contribute in such direction, this panel includes three papers that aim to map and explain the development of digital intermediaries in domestic and care work in three different regions. One of the papers gives an overall picture of these intermediaries in Europe, looking at six countries (Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain). Another paper focuses on three countries in south-eastern Europe (Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia) and the last on Latin American countries. These studies reveal differences as well as similarities within and between countries and regions.
Presentations of the Special Session
Mapping Digital Platforms in European Home Care and Domestic Work
Ivana Pais1, Francesco Bonifaccio1, Wike Been2
1Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, 2University of Groningen
This paper examines the platformisation of home care and domestic work in Europe, drawing on findings from the Origami project (Home Care Digital Platforms and Industrial Relations, https://origamiproject.it/). It focuses on six countries—Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain—providing an in-depth analysis of how digital platforms have developed unevenly across these contexts.
The study maps and analyses 69 platforms, categorizing them into four types based on two key indicators: whether the platform performs matching services and whether workers are employed under a formal contract. The categories are: Marketplace (no matching, no contract), Digital Agencies (matching and contract), On-demand platforms (matching, no contract), and Regulated Marketplace (contract, no matching).
Regulatory frameworks and industrial relations are found to critically influence platform operations, since they define working conditions and employment standards. The paper explores how these factors drive variations in platform development, employment arrangements, and the formalisation of the domestic labour market. It emphasizes the need for policy approaches that balance innovation with strong worker protections.
Digital Intermediaries in Domestic Work in Southeast Europe: A Comparative Perspective
Jelena Starcevic
McMaster University
The rise of digital labour platforms in the domestic work sector offers new opportunities for reorganization of the market with varying consequences for work conditions. Focusing on Slovenia, Croatia, and Serbia, this paper examines how digital intermediaries adapt to national institutional contexts shaped by socialist legacies and varied transitions to capitalism. Through a comparative analysis of platforms for domestic work operating in these countries, the paper highlights the platforms' diverse business models, including on-demand and marketplace structures, and their diverse impact on work arrangements. Findings reveal significant variation in work formalization: Slovenia exhibits a high degree of formalization, but in the form of self-employment, Croatia struggles with under-declared subcontracting, and Serbia maintains widespread informality. These trends underscore the platforms' ability to capitalize on existing regulatory gaps while perpetuating informal employment structures.
Digital Platforms for Domestic Work: A Latin American Cartography
Francisca Pereyra1, Lorena Poblete2
1Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2CONICET- Universidad Nacional de San Martín
Based on a compilation of case studies and a mapping of digital platforms, the paper maps the different platforms active in Latin America. First, it presents a preliminary proposal for classifying the different models of digital intermediation in domestic work in Latin America, focusing on the type of employment relationship. Second, we illustrate how each category of platform identified impacts on different dimensions of the working conditions. Third, we analyze the implications of the (frequent) cases in which different business models, and therefore different forms of contracts and working conditions, coexist within the same platform. Finally, we reflect on the challenges that this diversity and complexity pose in terms of the regulatory needs of these new forms of digital intermediation in the sector.
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