Short-term rentals and the platforming of emotional labor
Conducted as part of my MA research between 2017 and 2019, this research explores how short-term rental platforms—particularly Airbnb—reconfigured people’s relationships to the places where they lived. Drawing on fieldwork in New Orleans, LA, I found that platforms like Airbnb enrolled people into uneven processes of value capture. By slingshotting travelers into non-touristy, highly residential neighborhods, Airbnb leveraged the emotional labor of proximate neighbors in the process of capturing value for the platform....