Former Scientific Staff:
PhD researcher in Labour Geography from 2021 to 2025

PhD project:
Bridge over Troubled Water: Working realities on carework platforms in Geneva

My Ph.D. project examines how platform-mediated care and domestic labor (re)shape the lives of workers. The focus will be on platforms that match clients with workers who provide domestic services and/or caregiving services for children and seniors in the 'global city' of Geneva in Switzerland.Digital labor platforms are emerging in the care and domestic markets, promoting themselves under the banner of fighting informality and precarity. However, platform-mediated labor is increasingly criticized for eroding employment relationships, increasing value extraction and jeopardizing workers’ autonomy. Emerging research on care and domestic work platforms is slowly starting to uncover some of the arising issues with which workers are confronted. Data shows that similarly to other digital labor platforms, domestic and care work platforms exert control over the workers using rating systems and trust metrics, platform fees and terms of service as disciplinary tools. It remains unclear what forms of platform visibility workers benefit from and the privacy risks associated with them.

The empirical phase of the project will be based on conducting semi-structured interviews with workers who find work through digital platforms. The analysis will draw together theoretical concepts and frameworks from social reproduction theory, digital geographies, and scholarship on racial capitalism and conceptualizations of the ‘otherwise’.