(In)visibility of/in platform-mediated labor: how digital infrastructures devaluate work
Platform-mediated labor has arrived to private households. Platforms such as Helpling - an “Uber for house cleaning services” exemplify how digitalization, capitalism, and transformation of labor intersect. Platforms are not only socio-technical infrastructures that organize heterogeneous markets in contemporary capitalism(s), but they are also political-economic configurations that breed large scale social transformations. Critical research focuses on the flexibilization and individualization of work, points out fuzzy employment arrangements and employment misclassification, and highlight the precarization and radical responsibilization of platform workers. Scholars also caution that platforms reproduce or exacerbate existing inequalities, often via their digital infrastructure and algorithmic management and control practices. In this talk, I critically engage with platform-mediated labor through the lens of invisibility and present results from an over two-years-long research project on “Platform Cleaners. The potentials and risks of platform-mediated cleaning inGermany”.
Katarzyna Gruszka is a postdoc in the Data Society Research Program at the Department of Computer Science and Media Technology at Malmö University (starting February 2023).
The lecture will be held in English.