Matchmakers: placement agencies and digital platforms in the UK childcare market

James Muldoon, Natalie Sedacca and Paul Apostolidis

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: Households seeking childcare often turn to labour market intermediaries such as placement agencies and digital platforms to facilitate their search. This article draws on a qualitative research project to examine the respective roles played by agencies and platforms, comparing the structural power dynamics they engender between workers, clients, and intermediaries. First, it argues that digital platforms stand in an ambiguous position in relation to the formalisation of childcare. While they have contributed to reducing transaction costs and standardising processes, this has often been through the creation of more flexible and insecure forms of work compared with agencies. Second, in contrast with literature emphasising the disciplinary effects of platforms, we claim that they institute new forms of ‘constrained flexibility’, which have increased workers’ access to jobs, control over their schedule and communication with clients, while simultaneously subjecting them to increased market pressures and requiring higher levels of digital and entrepreneurial skills.

Keywords: care work; childcare; digital platforms; domestic work; placement agencies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J01 R14 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 21 pages
Date: 2025-03-01
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Published in Work in the Global Economy, 1, March, 2025, 5(1), pp. 6-26. ISSN: 2732-4176

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:125917

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