Since mid 2021, I have been carrying out research on hospitality work and divisions of labour in the Airbnb platform economy, together with Kiley Goyette who is a PhD researcher at the University of Toronto, Canada. The first fruit of our labor is a chapter, which is part of the book Platformisation of Urban Life. Towards a Technocapitalist Transformation European Cities available open access here open access. The chapter is entitled:
Second Shift 2.0. Intensifying housework in platform urbanism
In this chapter we examine how Airbnb hosts manage the demands of hosting while balancing this labour with the other duties in their lives such as housework, childcare, and paid employment. How do households that take in Airbnb guests divide the extra hospitality labor (an extra ‘shift’) among each other? We also question if and to whom Airbnb hosts outsource that labor if they don’t take care of it themselves. How are dynamics between gender and other social categories reflected in who is assigned the various types of hospitality labor, such as cleaning and administrative work? We highlight how this labor is distributed within different household compositions, including couples, singles, families, and cohabiting friends. The chapter and the book are freely available for download at the following link:
https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.12657/58443/1/9783839459645.pdf#page=120
The book has been published by Transcript Verlag and Columbia University Press and was edited by Anke StrĂ¼ver and Sybille Bauriedl.