Informal Home Care in the Digital Transformation: Platform Design and Work Ethics of Care

With the aging society in Germany, the demand for informal care in private households is rising. This has led to a growing market for digital platforms that broker informal care services. Research shows that workers in elderly care, as a sub-sector of care work, often embody a work ethic centered on caring and helpfulness. However, this strong ethic can result in self-exploitation. Despite prior insights, the mediating role of digital platforms and their repercussions on work ethics remain underexplored. Therefore, this article asks how workers’ ethics of care unfold within the design of platforms in platform-mediated care. Ten narrative-oriented, in-depth interviews with platform workers on two platforms were conducted. Findings reveal that care workers in this field of platform work have a work ethic of care strongly oriented towards identification with the role of caregiver and the needs of the client. The open and unstructured design of these platforms—where worker qualifications are rarely verified to attract large numbers—devalues and informalizes care work. The lack of recognition as a legitimate profession perpetuates the perception of care work as unskilled, diminishing its professional status and fostering feelings of unprofessionalism and self-exploitation.