Abstract
From an analysis of everyday practices of flexible working captured in video diaries, a form of pervasive but invisible support work is identified and presented. Labelled ‘digi-housekeeping’, this is work that is required to maintain the digital tools that enable flexible working, and incorporates the tasks of clearing, sorting, preparing, provisioning and troubleshooting. Through the sociocultural processes of responsibilization, personalization and work extension, interpreted here as emblematic of wider neoliberal contemporary work arrangements, digi-housekeeping is devalued and made invisible, characterizing these tasks as not ‘real’ work. Classifying these tasks as not ‘real’ work is a new kind of boundary work that supports the continuing displacement of work activities onto individual workers. It is argued that such tasks need to be made visible in order to address feelings of work intensification.
Highlights
From an analysis of everyday practices of flexible working captured in video diaries, a form of pervasive but invisible support work is identified and presented
The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) (2019) argues that flexible working is likely to increase in future with, for example, 70% of the workforce engaged in mobile working as early as 2020
The article concludes that the operation of neoliberal working arrangements can be seen even in such apparently mundane tasks as essential labour, which is distributed to the worker without acknowledgement or recompense
Summary
‘It’s my first email download and look what I’ve got. It’s a full screen of emails to deal with . . . A lot of them are rubbish, but you’ve still got to sort the rubbish’ (Jez, social entrepreneur). Just as with its domestic equivalent, troubleshooting included the mental labour of anticipating issues as well as real-time problem-solving Detailing these unremitting tasks as experienced by the research participants every day establishes digi-housekeeping as the invisible infrastructural work associated with the digital technologies that sustain flexible working (DeVault, 2014) and which are the unanticipated and unacknowledged resources required for flexible working In a similar way to Leanne, Anthony, a final year doctoral student, had learnt the value of ‘sorting’ as a self-driven form of highly personalized digi-housekeeping to support his flexible PhD work, which he described as ‘not really a “Monday to Friday” thing, it’s more of a “whenever you can find time to work on it” thing’: One of the most useful things I have for organizing different aspects of my life is . As the introduction of digital technologies is often positioned as increasing work efficiencies, the additional work that comes with using such technologies may be downplayed, ignored or unrecognized (Plesner et al, 2018)
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