International Conference: Feminist perspectives on the platformization of care work in European cities

The following text is the English translation of the  German report published in Rundbrief Geographie 317.   

In cities across Europe, digital platforms play an increasingly central role in providing services related to reproductive work. These increasingly demanded platform-mediated care services include food and grocery delivery, house cleaning, childcare, and eldercare. The outsourcing and commodification of household tasks not only expands the gig economy, but also transforms the gendered division of labour in everyday care work. Large cities are particularly attractive to platform businesses because they offer access to a broad customer base and a large pool of marginalised workers who accept precarious and poorly paid jobs due to residency laws and limited access to the labour market.

Contributions to the conference made it clear that the rise of platform-mediated care services should be understood as both a response to the ongoing care crisis and an effect of migrants being excluded from the labour market. Structural dynamics such as the intensification of paid work, cuts to public services and changes to household structures and lifestyles are creating gaps in care provision. These gaps are being addressed at an individual level through the outsourcing of care work to precarious gig workers. Feminist approaches reveal the interconnectedness of macropolitical structures of platformisation, micropolitical everyday decisions, and the intersectional vulnerability of care workers.

Platform economies in the field of care services is a very active area of research in geography. While most studies have focused on working conditions, few have examined corporate structures. At the conference, numerous excellent doctoral projects were presented which employed various methods to analyse working conditions in the platform economy, such as content analysis and expert interviews, as well as worker experiences through narrative interviews and ethnographic studies. Other projects examined the relationship between workers and customers through interviews, participatory studies and participant observation. 

The overarching question of the conference was: What are the distinctive features of digitalised platform work? Topics discussed included constant availability and its consequences for social reproduction, digital control and algorithmic logic in job placement, the anonymity of platforms and how this makes it easier to cross boundaries in the employment relationship, hierarchical relationships through digital evaluation systems, and normalised precariousness in terms of income, risk of discrimination and physical safety.

Prof. Dr. Sybille Bauriedl, Europa-Universität Flensburg
Prof. Dr. Karin Schwiter, Universität Zürich
Prof. Dr. Anke Strüver, Universität Graz