Hire Those Who Struggle: Digital solidarity economies and class struggles in Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement

Abstract

This article contributes to debates on worker organising in the digital economy by analysing Hire Those Who Struggle (Contrate Quem Luta), a WhatsApp-based labour-matching initiative coordinated by the Tech Sector of Brazil’s Homeless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Sem-Teto (MTST)), as an experiment in technology and labour within what we conceptualise as digital solidarity economies. We address gaps in the digital labour debates by examining a social movement-driven, multi-technology initiative from Latin America. Based on interviews and action research with MTST, we argue that Hire Those Who Struggle leverages the institutional strength of a militant social movement to build worker-owned technological alternatives that strengthen class struggle. Workers in the project act simultaneously as service providers and as political participants who circulate the movement’s struggles. Grounded in territorial organising and popular education praxis, the MTST’s Tech Sector links housing activism with labour organising to enact concepts of popular digital sovereignty and collective control over technology.