Introduction The growth of digital platforms and the new
business models or are guided by different
work modalities associated to them has
types of work relations. In such setting, this
attracted in recent years significant interest
article seeks to contribute to the literature with
within the academic world. Although existing
some novel research on the impact of digital
estimates show that these types of jobs have
intermediation in the world of domestic work in
still a limited impact on the
Argentina, through the analysis of workers
employed
population as a whole, their fast growth
using the digital platform Zolvers.
suggests substantial potential for expansion.
Zolvers is one of the oldest and most important
The literature has been accounting for some of
platforms in the domestic work sector around
the most disruptive and problematic changes
the globe. It was born in Argentina in 2014 and
that digital platforms introduce in several
later expanded to Mexico, Colombia and Chile.
dimensions of the world of work; that is, those
In Latin America, there is a growing number of
that involved mobilizations of workers and
digital platforms that, since the middle of the
judicial processes. In this context, the case of
last decade, intervene in the job market of
Uber has become paradigmatic, constituting
domestic work. 1 However, the impact of this
itself as a flagship of the world of digital work.
digital intermediation has so far been little
Since then, the neologism "uberisation" began
explored by social sciences in the region, both
to circulate as a key word to describe changes
in terms of the analysis of the platform
in labour relations brought about by platforms,
economy and in terms of its impact in the field
generally pointing in the direction of different forms of job insecurity.
of domestic work. This work fills the gap in the
The centrality acquired by the experience of
characterize
the
of
platform for domestic work, and to enquire
presumption that this radical transformation
about the working conditions it promotes,
of work modalities that app-based work brings
focusing particularly on the dimension of
with it could be labelled under a single model.
formalisation. Our analysis is based on a
On the one hand, the resonance of the debate
qualitative-quantitative fieldwork, carried out
around private passenger transport makes it
in the Metropolitan Area of Buenos Aires,
difficult to think of digital platforms as another
between
element of transformation of the world of work
capturing
in the 21st century that can have dissimilar
information prior to and at the onset of the
results for workers. On the other hand, it
COVID-19 pandemic.
Uber
platform
literature for both those areas: it seeks to produced
a
sort
reduces the visibility of other digital labour
June both
operations
2020
and
domestic
of
a
digital
January workers’
2021, job
In the first introductory section we detail the
platforms that provide other types of services
data use for this analysis and present a brief
and are based on completely different
1
the
This is the case of Aliada and Mi Dulce Hogar (Mexico),
Hogaru (Colombia), Donamaid (Brazil), MiMaidXpress (Panama), Casera (Ecuador), among others.
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