Abstract:
As demand for domestic services has increased, large numbers of domestic service firms have emerged, the domestic-service industry has flourished, and various domestic-service platforms have gradually appeared. Based on empirical materials from four platform companies, this article finds that domestic-service platforms are characterized by a model of "dual flexibility, " which in turn produces "dual precarity" in workers' work and lives. This is manifested in four ways. First, driven by their "profitability" and "intermediary" functions, platforms adopt flexible labor-use arrangements to reduce labor costs. These arrangements are coupled with domestic workers' preference for flexible employment under the influence of gendered family roles, thereby consolidating the flexible labor-use model of domestic-service platforms and forming "dual flexibility." Second, flexible labor-use arrangements oriented toward reducing labor costs generate work-related precarity among domestic workers, reflected in declining hourly wages, the absence of labor protections, and the gradual weakening of bargaining power. Third, the convergence of flexible labor use and flexible employment arrangements produces instability in domestic workers' social relations, pushing them further into a single-stranded support network and an isolated lifeworld. Fourth, work precarity and instability in social relations interact with and reinforce one another, giving rise to dual precarity across the domains of work and life. By proposing the generative mechanism of "dual flexibility-dual precarity, " this article moves beyond the "technology-centered" approach that has dominated previous research on domestic-service platforms. It recenters the intermediary and profit-oriented features of platforms, clarifies the relationship between flexibility and precarity, and shows that both operate as shackles that bind domestic workers tightly to domestic-service platforms.