Peer Reviewed

Care work has long been relegated to private households and small communities, however, with the entry of digital marketplaces, it is becoming part of public economic spheres. While care work has been generally devalued and understudied, it is a complex practice embedded in a network of economic transactions, social relations, material conditions, and socio-cultural norms. This paper explores the care giving networks among migrant house-cleaners guided by Tronto’s ‘care ethics’ and Puig de la Bellacasa’s ‘matters of care’. We interviewed 19 Latino house-cleaners in Toronto to understand their care practices and networks. Our analysis identifies gaps in our participants’ care networks. We create a new term, lateral care, to explicate the digital communities of care practice our participants formed. We conclude with implications for the future design of technologies for labor economies that attend to concerns of care.

This paper explores the interplay between identity, collective action, and digital marketplaces among Latino house-cleaners in Toronto. Domestic work, such as house-cleaning, has traditionally been devalued, gendered, and delegated to marginalised immigrant populations. The informal nature of house-cleaning work, also introduces precarity, vulnerabilities and potential avenues of exploitation. Drawing on 19 interviews with Latino house-cleaners, the paper underscores how identity shapes experiences and strategies in the labour markets. We find that Latino house-cleaners prefer to use asynchronous digital marketplaces, such as social media commerce groups and online classified advertisement websites, as the platforms provides flexibility and control over their labour outcomes. The paper further delves into how group identities online - such as being Latino and women - foster collective action and solidarity. The paper provides insights on how we can support the needs support the challenges and needs of immigrant domestic workers in technology-mediated labour markets.