Origami

In this episode of The Origami Podcast, Wike Been (University of Groningen) discusses the role of digital platforms in the Dutch home care and household services sector. The conversation explores how the lack of formal sector recognition, widespread undeclared work, and fragmented regulation shape platform business models and labour conditions. Drawing on the Helpling court case, the episode highlights how platforms respond to legal pressure by shifting between employer-like roles and pure matchmaking models. While platforms are often presented as a solution to informality, the episode shows why their potential to improve working conditions and support regulation remains largely unrealised in practice.

How do national care regimes influence the way digital platforms enter, organise and transform the home care sector? In this episode, Clémence Ledoux and Nicole Teke (University of Nantes) unpack the role of institutional frameworks in shaping platform business models across Europe. Drawing on comparative evidence from the ORIGAMI project, they show how differences in funding schemes, regulatory instruments and market boundaries lead platforms to adopt distinct organisational strategies. Focusing on the French case, the episode explores how digital platforms navigate a highly regulated care sector, the models they use to operate within or around existing rules, and the ongoing policy debates on platform work in France—from authorisation procedures to algorithmic management and tax incentives. A conversation that sheds light on why platform-mediated care develops so unevenly across countries, and how governance shapes innovation on the ground.

This episode features Slavina Spasova and Ilda Durri from the European Social Observatory discussing how EU policies are reshaping long-term care and platform-mediated home care work. They explore how platformisation amplifies existing challenges in the sector—unstable earnings, unpredictable schedules, limited representation and blurred responsibilities—and how the new Platform Work Directive addresses these issues through clearer employment status, algorithmic transparency, data rights and health and safety protections. The episode concludes with their policy recommendations for building a sustainable, people-centred care platform economy.

In this episode of the Origami Project Podcast, Diana Dovgan, Secretary General of CECOP, discusses the role of cooperatives in Europe’s evolving care ecosystem. She highlights how worker-owned and multi-stakeholder cooperatives can enhance service quality through democratic governance and stronger worker involvement. Dovgan also examines the challenges and potential of cooperative approaches to platform-based home care, stressing the need for a level playing field, supportive regulation, and public–community partnerships. Finally, she outlines key EU policy areas—skills development, financial speculation in elderly care, and public procurement reform—that are crucial for ensuring sustainable, high-quality, community-oriented care services.

In this episode of the Origami Project Podcast, Samantha Howe from the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) discusses the fast-growing yet vulnerable workforce of home care workers employed through digital platforms. She explores the urgent need to enforce the EU Platform Work Directive, the challenges unions face in organizing isolated and often migrant workers, and the strategies that could help build stronger collective voices in a rapidly evolving care ecosystem.

In this episode of the Origami Project Podcast, Caroline Murphy, Associate Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Limerick, explores how digital care platforms are emerging within Ireland’s evolving welfare and care landscape. She discusses the pressures of an ageing population, the rise of private and platform-based actors, and the challenges faced by caregivers, families, and policymakers. Murphy also reflects on whether digital platforms can provide sustainable solutions for care — and what structural and organisational changes would be necessary to make this possible.