Finding Good Help: Reconfiguring Digital Mediation in China's Domestic Service Labour Market

Abstract

This article studies the making of a small fragment of China's social credit system by focusing on the evolution of digital mediation in the market for domestic service. We study the ongoing development and reconfiguration of various forms of digital mediation in the domestic service labour market from early local digital blacklisting attempts to the making of a nationwide app linked to the social credit system. We find that digital mediation so far mainly contributes to controlling domestic workers through the indicators included in the app. These indicators to a large extent reinforce existing categorisations of domestic workers. While the early blacklists were primarily market-driven, thereby resembling the platform economy outside China, the later nationwide system is closely linked to the central state and strengthens central state control over the market for domestic services.