“Playing Tetris”: Domestic Infrastructures of Labor Participation in Spain's Transport Sector

Abstract

This article examines how women drivers in Malaga's private passenger transport sector sustain paid work while holding primary responsibility for domestic labor and care. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2020 and 2021 with women taxi and platform-based drivers (Uber and Cabify), it explores the everyday arrangements that make employment possible in a male-dominated industry characterized by long and unsociable working hours. I show that women's participation in paid work depends on what I call domestic infrastructures of labor participation: informal household arrangements that organize and sustain labor participation through the coordination of care, time, and support. Through three ethnographic cases, the article shows how these arrangements operate unevenly: sometimes enabling employment, sometimes intensifying strain, and sometimes failing altogether. By shifting attention from platforms and workplaces to the domestic infrastructures through which labor participation is assembled, the analysis highlights how labor markets rely on largely invisible forms of coordination. The findings also point to the growing fragility of family-based care arrangements in Spain, as successive generations of women remain in paid employment and are less available to provide intergenerational support, raising questions about the conditions under which women can continue to participate in work.