Governing invisibility in the platform economy: excavating the logics of platform care

Abstract

There has been a mounting research output on the social dimensions of the datafication, fragmentation and platformisation of infrastructures. This paper conceptually excavates the logics of ‘platform care’ as a continuation of historically invisibilised reproductive labour. Although affective labour provided in private homes cannot be fully hierarchised, sold, nor algorithmically sorted, digital platforms provide short-term techno-fixes to fill in ‘care gaps’, acting as technocapitalist assemblages governing invisibility.