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Paper short abstract

This paper examines the role of social media as a labour platform and how digital performances are converted into political subjectivities.

Paper long abstract

This work examines how social media, particularly Instagram, has reshaped the cleaning market in Brazil and the Philippines, giving rise to a new career path: the Personal Cleaner. Through online courses, domestic workers learn to use the platform as a sales tool, repositioning their professional identity and claiming dignity for their work. In this process, they present themselves as entrepreneurs, treating their profiles as “business headquarters”. Based on seven months of ethnographic research in Rio de Janeiro, this study examines how these entrepreneurial practices perpetuate a narrative of social mobility rooted in individual effort and competition, often accompanied by criticism of peers deemed unambitious (“poverty mindset”). This reorganisation of domestic work through social media implies changes in the political subjectivities of workers, who begin to operate in an environment driven by the attention economy and highly individualised. The visual aspect of the platform is also important in this process, as it allows the comparison of services and professionals, increasing competitiveness and comparison among them. This article argues that, while this reconfiguration opens new forms of agency, it also reveals a political shift that weakens collective aspirations and solidarity among domestic workers.