UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Global Assemblages, ​Technofuturos​ and the Worldwide Web of Care: Laboring Latinas and Care Work Platforms (Alia, Tidy, Handy and Care.com) A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts in Chicana and Chicano Studies by Magally Alejandra Miranda Alcázar 2019 © Copyright by Magally Alejandra Miranda Alcázar 2019 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS Global Assemblages, ​Technofuturos​ and the Worldwide Web of Care: Laboring Latinas and Care Work Platforms (Alia, Tidy, Handy and Care.com) by Magally Alejandra Miranda Alcázar Master of Arts in Chicana/o Studies University of California, Los Angeles, 2019 Professor Maylei S. Blackwell, Chair This thesis takes up “care work platforms” as an object of study. I define ‘care work platforms’ as digital infrastructures that enable care work service providers and individuals seeking care work services to interact. This paper argues for thinking about care work platforms as technoscientific objects that fit the criteria of global assemblages and proceeds to analyze four Los Angeles-based platforms: Tidy, Handy, Care.com and Alia using new media analyses. Furthermore, I consider the implications of care work platforms on what scholars in Latina/o Studies have called technofuturos, or the study of Latinidades during a period of accelerated globalization, in particular the globalization of care work and information. ii The thesis of Magally Alejandra Miranda Alcázar is approved. Robert P Brenner Otto Santa Ana Maylei S Blackwell, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2019 iii DEDICATION For Damian iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures List of Tables I. Introduction II. On Care Work Platforms as Global Assemblages and ​Technofuturos A. Globalization of Care Work B. Care Work as Affect and Commodity, or the Margins of Economic Thought C. Of Network Culture and ​Technofuturos III. Methods IV. Findings V. Conclusion v List of Figures Figure 1.1 Figure 1.2 Figure 1.3 Figure 1.4 Figure 1.5 Figure 1.6 Figure 1.7 Figure 1.8 Figure 1.9 Figure 1.10 Figure 1.11 Figure 1.12 List of Tables Table 1 vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Maylei Blackwell, first and foremost for her guidance and unwavering commitment to breaking barriers for women of color in the academy at a time when such service is often invisibilized, uncompensated and as she reminds us in her first book ​Chicana Power!​, too often a road to burnout. Many thanks are also owed to The Coven - Nadia Zepeda, Audrey Silvestre, Angelica Becerra, Brenda Nicolas, Rose Simons and Chantiri Duran Resendiz - who have been a consistent source of spiritual and intellectual renewal and resource for this first-generation, sister-less Chicana. For his countless lessons on all things Marxist science, but most importantly for his comradeship and his faith in the new new left, I must also thank my advisor, Dr. Robert Brenner. I have been privileged to count on the thoughtfulness of a number of interlocutors including Abraham Encinas, to whom I owe an unpayable debt for reminding me that it is our job in the Humanities to tell stories, Maya Andrea Gonzalez, one of the most brilliant Marxist feminist political theorists I know and my multi-talented friend Rudy Mondragon. Thanks also to Efren Lopez, Dr. Otto Santa Ana, Dr. Devon G. Peña and countless others I am ashamed I can not thank by name. To my dear friends and coworkers Kris, Efren, Chynna, Maryann, Brenda, Raquel and Andi Xoch, you are very much appreciated. And, lastly, but certainly not least I owe everything to my family who have taught me all I know about surviving: Andresito, Itzelita, Anahi, Alejandra, Manuel, Ubaldo, Mami, Papi and Damian (we made it). vii “In this imagined future in which domestic service and caregiving work is respected, openly recognized, and legal, it would be less important whether maids are Latinas or not. As domestic service becomes a more viable way of earning a living wage with dignity and respect, there would be less of an incentive to deny the value of the contribution domestic service workers make to society. There would be no need to differentiate domestic service workers by immigration status, education, or language skills in order to rationalize their wages and working conditions. The questions of migration, gender, and race dissipate as they are disentangled from labor processes and practices. Policy reform can act as a catalyst in the process of disentangling identity issues from labor and migration practices so as to empower domestic worker services and free Latinos to give meaning to the concept of Latinidad on their own terms.” From Teresa Carrillo’s “The Best of Care” in ​Technofuturos​ (2007) 1 The epigraph above is from Teresa Carrillo’s essay “The Best of Care” in ​Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies​, an anthology whose aim is “to provide an intellectual and creative space for destabilizing and reassessing our understanding of Latinidades during a period of accelerated globalization, transnationalism, transmodernity, and reconfigurations of empire.”2 Published in 2007, ​Technofuturos​ precedes this study by a more than a decade but in many ways it captures the spirit of this project on care work platforms and the laboring Latinas who, as Carrillo argued, continue to be overrepresented, undervalued and deeply entangled in caring for America. As a political and economic project and a historical process, globalization has been a powerful force for erosion and recomposition, as well as a powerfully productive force for articulating new constellations of global capital, labor, power relations, new discourse and new cultures. Globalization as a process 1 Teresa Carrillo, “The Best of Care: Latinas as Transnational Mothers and Caregivers,” Technofuturos: ​ Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies, Minneapolis, MN: Lexington Books, 2007, p. 209. ​ 2 Nancy Raquel Mirabal, “Historical Futures, Globality, and Writing Self: An Introduction to Technofutoros,” Technofuturos: Critical Interventions in Latina/o Studies, Minneapolis, MN: Lexington ​ ​ Books, 2007, p. 209. 1 invites us to be attuned to new social, political and economic formations and processes and to build new methodological approaches. This paper reflects the spirit of research of ​technofuturos​. This thesis takes as its object of study “care work platforms,” digital platforms that mediate care work. For the purpose of this essay, I use Nick Srnicek’s definition of platforms which he defines as “digital infrastructures that enable two or more groups to interact.”3 From Rachel Brown, I take the definition of care work to refer to the tasks and occupations involved in the care of children, elderly and the infirm, housekeeping, nursing and sex work; beyond occupations, however, I also define care work in terms of the work of “caring for” things like physical chores, cooking, cleaning, washing or “caring about” such as childcare, elederly care.4 So, I define ‘care work platforms’ as digital infrastructures that enable care work service providers and individuals seeking care work services to interact. I first became aware of care work platforms in 2016 when I was the target of advertisements by the company, Tidy, one of the platforms profiled later in this study. Though I had studied domestic work - house cleaning, childcare and elderly care - by Latina women as an undergraduate, I was honestly puzzled by this particular company, Tidy, and what it meant for the work of care in the contemporary moment. My first instinct was to reach for a comparison to ride-hailing platforms like the ubiquitous Uber and I even found myself explaining this project to people by saying “I’m studying care work platforms. They’re kind of like Uber, but for domestic/care work.” The reality was that, even as I said that, I could feel that the comparison required some stretching. Certainly care work 3 Nick Snicek, Platform Capitalism, Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2017. ​ ​ 4 Brown, Rachel. “Re-examining the Transnational Nanny,” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18:2, ​ ​ ​ ​ 210-229, 2015. 2 platforms share many aspects in common with Uber, especially in terms of the kinds of digital infrastructures i.e. rating systems, worker and client profiles, algorithmic technologies, etc. But, in reality, the work of care is unlike driving a car or transporting a passenger in some ways that are critical to unpack. Care work is a historically specific and unique formation. It has been shaped in the West by particular ideological formations. Care work in the United States has been shaped by the twin pillars of slavery and patriarchy in ways that are incommensurate with the work of chauffering or taxi driving. Domestic labor in the West has been historically “othered” economically in particular ways including through the institutionalized separation of the public and private sphere. Under the coercive system of slavery, Black women carried the double burden of wage labor and housework in the plantation economy, a trend that continued into the post-antebellum 20th century where many Black women worked as paid housekeepers.5 Today, crafted by particular domestic laws and foreign policy, domestic work has been shaped along patterns of globalization such that have entangled it discursively if not ontologically with particular bodies, namely Latinas and other immigrant women from the Global South. Care work platforms, as I will explain in detail in this thesis, are made possible through the confluence of a number