Care work is shifting into digital spaces. Digital platforms are reshaping the dynamics of caregiving through social media and labour sites. On these platforms, care workers are engaging in entrepreneurial opportunities, while also practicing networked care with each other. While traditional perspectives frame care as a dyadic, hierarchical exchange within private households, these digital spaces reveal decentralized, expansive practices of mutual aid and solidarity among care workers. This paper expands upon our concept of lateral care, which operates both alongside and outside oppressive infrastructures, fostering mutual aid and resilience among peers through shared identities and experiences. Drawing on interviews with 19 Latino house cleaners in Toronto, we show how they navigate the racial, gendered, and transnational challenges of migrant domestic labour. We examine how cleaners use asynchronous digital markets not only to find work but also to build non-hierarchical peer networks of support. By highlighting the dual role of these spaces as sites of economic survival and solidarity, we underscore the ethical responsibility of platform creators to create more equitable labour infrastructures. This work contributes to ongoing discussions on gendered and migrant labour, informal markets, and the transformative potential of digital technologies in care economies.

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Lateral Care as Entrepreneurial Solidarity

  • Adrian Petterson,
  • Isabella Jaimes Rodríguez,
  • Olivia Doggett

摘要

Care work is shifting into digital spaces. Digital platforms are reshaping the dynamics of caregiving through social media and labour sites. On these platforms, care workers are engaging in entrepreneurial opportunities, while also practicing networked care with each other. While traditional perspectives frame care as a dyadic, hierarchical exchange within private households, these digital spaces reveal decentralized, expansive practices of mutual aid and solidarity among care workers. This paper expands upon our concept of lateral care, which operates both alongside and outside oppressive infrastructures, fostering mutual aid and resilience among peers through shared identities and experiences. Drawing on interviews with 19 Latino house cleaners in Toronto, we show how they navigate the racial, gendered, and transnational challenges of migrant domestic labour. We examine how cleaners use asynchronous digital markets not only to find work but also to build non-hierarchical peer networks of support. By highlighting the dual role of these spaces as sites of economic survival and solidarity, we underscore the ethical responsibility of platform creators to create more equitable labour infrastructures. This work contributes to ongoing discussions on gendered and migrant labour, informal markets, and the transformative potential of digital technologies in care economies.