Digital care platforms in Brazil: Access and control of work at the intersection of multiple crises

Abstract

In Brazil, especially after the health crisis, we have witnessed the expansion of care platform companies. From this process, a question emerged: what were the possible effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the digitization of labor intermediation in the care sector? Through the analysis of workers’ experiences in three platforms, encompassing direct and indirect care, we sought to understand how the pandemic, intertwined with the governance of these companies, affected care work practices. To confront the lack of disaggregated data, we mapped the care apps and platforms collecting data from the country’s main app store; we analyzed the platforms’ Terms of Service and Conditions of Use, and the company websites; we conducted interviews with workers on these platforms; and we referred to their complaints on the Reclame Aqui website. We conclude that the governance of the platforms affected the workers’ experience in different ways and with varying effects depending on the platform. Among them, we highlighted the dialogue between clients and workers, the exacerbating of control provided by a system of prescriptive and punitive ratings, the conditions of care work, including tasks that go beyond expected activities, leading to an overlap of different forms of care. Having documented the intensification of care work and the capacity of the platforms to go beyond the matching of demanders and providers towards intervening in the way work itself is performed is the contribution of this research to an analysis of the forms taken by the broad and recent process of digitalization of care work in Brazil.

Keywords:
Digital labor platforms; Care; Job intermediation; Brazil.