UCLA

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.