The platformisation of paid care work - such as domestic work - has been an area of increasing academic interest. While there is a growing body of empirical evidence (Hunt & Manchingura 2016; Kasliwal 2020; ILO 2021; Tandon & Rathi 2021; Sibiya & du Toit 2022), platformised work remains under-theorised, particularly in non-Western contexts (such as India) where traditional, structural inequalities within domestic work create unique conditions for platformised domestic workers (PDWs) and worker collectivisation. This paper aims to address this critical gap in scholarship. 

Through an in-depth, qualitative study, developed and conducted as part of my doctoral thesis, I aim to document the complex transitional phase of platformisation within domestic work, which doesn't fully conforms to widely studied gig-work models (as seen in cab-hailing, delivery sectors). In particular, my research captures how collective bargaining mechanisms in the platform economy has largely invisibilised domestic work and workers. I argue that platformisation has fractured worker identity across categories—a domestic worker, platform worker—that has left these platformised domestic workers outside new gig-work unions, as well as traditional worker unions. 

This exclusion stems from several factors: (1) the temporality of platformisation in care work, where workers may move between traditional and platform-mediated arrangements; (2) the embeddedness of (platformised) care work in existing social hierarchies that complicate worker solidarity; and (3) the inadequate theoretical frameworks applied by organising entities that fail to accommodate these hybrid working identities.

My findings suggest the need for reimagining collective bargaining approaches that can address this non-formal, non-gig identity liminality. Through this (and other) finding, the research also contributes to both practical organising efforts and theoretical understandings of how platform capitalism transforms established sectors in Global South contexts, with particular attention to care work's distinctive characteristics that resist straightforward platformisation.