Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the everyday practices of Brazilian migrant women to access work as cleaners and make a home in London as they navigate virtual, domestic and urban spaces. Between the online and offline, new forms of labour organisation, informal tactics and conceptions of domestic work emerge.

Paper long abstract:

Across different social media platforms, a busy landscape of public and private online spaces bring together a growing number of Brazilian workers in London. These spaces are key to many migrant workers, who continuously look for advice based on lived experience and first-hand reports on changes in the European labour market, such as those seen during the coronavirus pandemic. Brazilians connect online to share mobility strategies, accommodation, memes, services, church events and, most of all, work - especially cleaning jobs for women. Drawing from a digital ethnography of 11 months, this paper explores the everyday practices of Brazilian cleaners to make a home in London as they navigate virtual, domestic and urban spaces. In specific social media spaces, cleaners discuss shifts in the job market and differences between Brazil and the UK, share videos of their cleaning routines, negotiate job positions in Brazilian "cleaning rotas" or simply get together. Newcomers also learn informal tactics to use on-demand work platforms and job search websites, which are added to a broader set of online/offline strategies to access work. Importantly, these forms of mediated sociality may expand discourses and practices that challenge stigmatised notions of domestic work from Brazil and create new forms of labour organisation within a sector historically considered "unorganisable", fostering transnational solidarity networks. For cleaners who are also producers and consumers of online content, the smartphone becomes a gateway to communities of belonging that blur the lines between the online and the offline and between "here" and "there".