New mobilities or persistent inequalities? Exploring the intersections of migration, gender, race/ethnicity in the exploitation of digitalised domestic labour (In short: NeMo)

Digital platforms efficiently mediate demand and supply of labour on a large scale creating digital marketplaces for services. Simultaneously, evidence shows that platforms contribute to a degradation of labour. Platforms do not guarantee minimum wage nor income security and challenge occupational health standards which are particularly important in the context of a worldwide pandemic. Nonetheless, platforms have offered marginalized workers such as migrants, racialized minorities and workers with familial obligations (often women), alternative channels for subsistence. This raises questions not only about how platforms (re)produce existing labour market inequalities related to migration status, ethnicity/race and gender, but also how labour and data mobilities intertwine with state and international labour regulations, prohibition of labour exploitation and migration control. Utilizing qualitative research methods (e.g. interviews and participant observations), NeMo investigates the impact of digitalised platforms on labour relations by zooming in on the particular sector of domestic work. A sector especially vulnerable to labour exploitation due to its legal disenfranchisement and siting in the private household. The project will reveal how inequalities related to migration status, race/ethnicity and gender are reproduced, reconfigured and resisted in platform labour. Accordingly, policy recommendations on best practices protecting workers in domestic labour platforms will be formulated.