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Domestic Labour and the Rise of Household Cleaning Companies

Objective

This project investigates the marketisation of household cleaning through private agencies Australia and the United Kingdom, examining how domestic labour is reorganised, standardised, and transformed into a profit-oriented service sector. Once performed unpaid within families or informally between individuals, cleaning is increasingly delivered through businesses that hire workers, set standards, and sell these services for profit. The research asks how agency-mediated cleaning reshapes labour relations and what the consequences are for workers. By focusing on agency-mediated cleaning, this project opens a new research field: it reveals how domestic labour is being formalised into a distinct industry, with its own managerial logics, contractual practices, and profit-making strategies. Studying it matters because it shows how an essential form of everyday work is being transformed into a commercial industry. Contemporary evidence will be interpreted alongside nineteenth- and twentieth-century sources in the UK, such as diaries, autobiographies, and household manuals. This allows for a dual comparison: (1) historically, by tracing continuities and ruptures in UK domestic labour from the servant model to modern agency-mediated work; and (2) geographically, by analysing patterns in UK cleaning alongside contemporary Australian practices, identifying shared and divergent organisational logics and labour experiences.

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Keywords

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Programme(s)

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-GF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Global Fellowships

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF

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Coordinator

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 309 223,02
Address
BEACON HOUSE QUEENS ROAD
BS8 1QU BRISTOL
United Kingdom

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Region
South West (England) Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol/Bath area Bristol, City of
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

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