Home care for profit: Intermediary agencies and digital platforms brokering migrant women’s labour in Spain

Abstract

This article explores the recent proliferation of intermediary agencies and digital platforms that provide senior home care in Spain. Based on qualitative fieldwork consisting of semi-structured interviews (n = 20) and participatory workshops (n = 3), the aim is twofold: on one hand, it identifies the underlying causes of the proliferation of these brokers, such as changes to legislation regulating domestic work and increased collaboration between the welfare regime and private enterprise in the provision of home care, particularly since the 2020 health emergency, and on the other hand, it analyses how brokering has affected the nature of the sector and the migrant women’s working conditions. The results indicate that the rise in the number of intermediary agencies marks a new phase in the commodification of care in Spain. Our analysis highlights the contradictions between the business model of these agencies and platforms, which define themselves as organisations able to guarantee the ‘professionalisation’ and ‘formalisation’ of home care work, and the harsh reality of the dire working conditions encountered by workers, mostly migrant women from Latin America.