Vol. 2 (2025)
Original Articles

The era of platform work in the care Italian care system

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  • Andrea Ciarini
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/jep-20883

Published 2026-07-18

Copyright (c) 2026 Andrea Ciarini

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Abstract

This article examines the relationship between welfare regimes, labour-market regulation, and the rise of digital platforms in the care sector. It argues that the diffusion of digital platforms reflects and reproduces national institutional configurations rather than transforming them uniformly. Starting from the characteristics of the Italian welfare system and its regulatory mechanisms, this paper aims to shed light on the role of new work platforms in the sector and to examine the implications for regulatory mechanisms. The question we ask is whether and to what extent a system strongly oriented towards informal family care is modified by the entry of actors such as platforms, which hypothetically tend to formalise the relationships between families and providers. Second, drawing on the Italian familistic model, we assess whether and how platforms and digital technologies contribute to new segmentation mechanisms in the care market, including by channelling unmet demand to present themselves as innovative providers.

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