New mobilities or persistent inequalities? (NeMo)

NeMo explores how digital platforms shape employment relations in paid domestic work. It particularly looks into how inequalities in the economy are reproduced, reconfigured or resisted by platforms.

The platform economy

Platforms are defined as digital intermediaries that match supply and demand creating digital marketplaces for services, examples include: Uber, Deliveroo and Care.com. They offer some groups of marginalised workers, such as migrants, racialised minorities and workers with familial obligations (often women), new and flexible opportunities to access work. However, there is growing evidence that platforms contribute to a degradation of employment relations as they do not guarantee minimum wage, income security and challenge worker organisation. The pandemic also highlighted problems associated with occupational health standards. 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. 

Digitised domestic work

NeMo will analyse the relationship between platform labour and inequalities that are embedded in the globalised economy but importantly shaped by national and local policy contexts and decisions and actions of stakeholders, including workers and employers. The project focusses on paid domestic work in the platform economy. Domestic work, defined as all tasks conducted in the private household including cleaning, child rearing and caring for the elderly  was designated as an essential sector during the Covid19 pandemic. Compared to other sectors of the platform economy, such as ride-hailing (Uber) and delivery (Deliveroo), it has been understudied despite claims that it is the fastest growing sector in platform labour.

Researchers

Principle investigator: Dr. Jing Hiah is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at the Erasmus University Rotterdam and a Dutch Research Council NWO Rubicon Fellow at the specialist research institute Migration Mobilities Bristol and the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies of the University of Bristol.

Scientific supervisor: Professor Bridget Anderson

Further details

Visit the NeMo website for more information.

NeMo is a Dutch Research Council (NWO) funded Rubicon research project hosted by MMB.

This project is associated with the MMB Challenge on Bordering, control, justice