This article explains how digitally mediated provision of domestic care services perpetuates the invisibility and informality of such work through individualising risk, which we operationalise by one of its dimensions, that of unpaid labour. We understand unpaid labour as the cost of the risk borne individually by workers at the intersection of the social (inter-personal) and economic (monetary) spheres. Drawing on the experiences of domestic care workers providing their services through platforms, the study shows how platforms have made their way into the labour markets and welfare structures of two mature economies, Belgium and France. Via their (digital) rules, they pursue ‘regulatory compliance’ and ‘disruption’ as distinct strategies for establishing platform dominance, albeit with country-based differences. Platform-mediated employment outcomes remain generally unrecognised, undocumented and informal, with unpaid labour characterising the cost of the individualisation of risk.

Researchers search for factors explaining the disruptive impact of labour platforms on work, yet very few studies explore how platforms approach product markets and the resultant effects on platform workers’ working conditions. Looking at this question, this paper studies distinct but similar international and regional food delivery platforms in Poland and Italy, exploring which factors explain differences in their working conditions. Two findings emerge. First, international and regional platforms differ substantially in terms of how they approach product markets. Second, these differences account for the variety within (and across) platforms’ employment outcomes.

Sociology scholars have shown that unpaid labour is widespread in digital labour platform work, yet no study has shed light on the mechanisms generating unpaid work in the digital platform sector. This paper aims to fill this gap and points to the mechanisms produced at the interface between platforms' marketization strate-gies and the regulation of self-employment in national contexts to explain the way in which unpaid labour unfolds in online freelancing platform work. We base our argument on an empirical study that investigates work in four different online freelancing platforms and in four European countries, namely Italy, France, Bel-gium and Poland.

This article examines how platform workers providing food delivery and domestic services in Belgium engage in contentions over unpaid labour time. Drawing on theories of organisational misbehaviour around the ‘wage–effort’ bargain, we explore how workers reclaim some control over their income by contesting their exposure to unpaid labour time. Based on a qualitative analysis of two labour platforms, the article illustrates how platforms’ systems of time control expose workers to unpaid labour time through work extensification (that is, food delivery) and work intensification (that is, domestic work). It also indicates how workers contest platforms’ control over unpaid labour time by developing various practices around platforms’ systems of control. Food delivery couriers increase their income by cutting down on unpaid idle time, while domestic workers try to improve their access to clients, jobs and pay which sometimes entails intentionally prolonging their unpaid labour time. Thus, we argue that examining workers’ contentions over unpaid labour time contributes to a better understanding of how workers can develop a sense of agency in a context of exploitative platform work by actively navigating and purposefully using their exposure to unpaid labour time to regain control over their income.