journal article · language: es · peer reviewed: yes
· Sociology / political theory · approach: qualitative ·
source: pdf/gil_2019_recerca_hosts.pdf
Airbnbsharing economyneoliberalismprecariousnessentrepreneur of the self
Analysis mode
document only
Verdict
partially supported
Rubric score
2.2/5
Claim support index ?
39/100
core claims (thesis/main/conclusion): 42
A theory-led qualitative essay arguing that Airbnb hosting lowers hosts' economic precarity while raising their 'vital' (existential) precarity, because hosts must turn themselves and their homes into enterprises.
Thesis (C1) Hosting on Airbnb reduces hosts' economic precariousness but increases their vital precariousness. partial
The qualitative descriptions of what hosts do (crafting profiles, managing and rationing sociability, being constantly available) are credible and well illustrated. The headline causal trade-off — less economic precarity, more vital precarity — is a theoretically motivated interpretation rather than a demonstrated finding: the economic half is not measured, the vital half rests on selected extreme cases, and reverse causality (precarious people host) is not addressed. Several quantitative-sounding assertions are unsourced.
Claims (15)
25422
Issues (9)
243
Numeric checks (3)
111
Summary
Starting from Airbnb's marketing promise that anyone can earn extra income to recover purchasing power lost in the crisis, the article analyses the work performed by peer-to-peer hosts (explicitly excluding multi-listing professional hosts). Drawing on Foucault, Laval & Dardot and Brown, it frames the host as a neoliberal 'entrepreneur of the self' and, drawing on Postone, treats hosting activities as abstract labour that is organised over the reproductive sphere rather than over conventional work. It distinguishes material work (cleaning, key handover) from immaterial work (producing 'externalities', experiences and sociability) and illustrates the latter with excerpts from semi-structured interviews with 'dozens' of hosts in New York, San Francisco, Madrid and Barcelona. A final section, drawing on Lorey, Butler and Pérez Orozco, argues that the activity increases 'vital precariousness' (loss of control over home, time, intimacy) even as the income reduces economic precariousness; vivid vignettes (a host sleeping in a closet for 2.5 years, 'urban nomads' who vacate their homes at weekends) and an InsideAirbnb table of host response times are offered as evidence.
Research questions
What form does the activity of Airbnb hosts take as work?
How do hosts adopt an entrepreneurial logic to increase the profitability of hosting?
What are the effects of hosting on hosts' economic and 'vital' precariousness?
Stated contribution
Applies theories of neoliberal subjectivation and precarity to platform-mediated home-sharing, proposing that the capital-labour conflict becomes a capital-life conflict for hosts.
How the argument is built
(1) Theory: the host as entrepreneurial subject (Foucault, Laval & Dardot, Brown). (2) Hosting as abstract labour built on the reproductive sphere (Postone; Gil 2018c 'prosumer labour'); hosts say it is work. (3) Typology of host work: material vs immaterial (externalities, sociability, reputation); illustrated with interview quotes. (4) Precarity as governmentality (Lorey, Butler); vignettes and response-time data show the invasion of life. (5) Conclusion: Airbnb reduces economic but increases vital precarity; precarity as a mode of being governed.
Argument map
Claims (boxes) coloured by how well the paper supports them; concepts as ellipses. Arrows point from premise to what it supports.
Thick black border = thesis; blue border = conclusion/recommendation. Click a node to jump to it. Layout engine: graphviz.
C1partialthesisempirical causalnon trivialp. 3; p. 18
Hosting on Airbnb reduces hosts' economic precariousness but increases their vital precariousness.
“se trata de una actividad que reduce la precariedad económica de la persona, pero aumenta su precariedad vital”
Assessment: The 'vital precarity' half is illustrated by vivid interview material and is plausible for the hosts quoted, but prevalence is not shown and the cases are explicitly selected as the most striking. The 'economic precarity reduced' half is asserted rather than shown: there is no data on hosts' incomes, pre-hosting situation or the size of Airbnb earnings, and the main source for it is Airbnb's own advocacy site. The causal trade-off is therefore more a theoretical framing than an empirically demonstrated result.
To maximise earnings, hosts constitute themselves as entrepreneurial subjects ('entrepreneurs of the self') who reorganise home and daily life around value production.
Assessment: Coherent application of the Foucault / Laval-Dardot framework; the interview excerpts on profile crafting and calculated sociability are consistent with it. However the framework is posited before the data and no disconfirming cases are considered, so the excerpts illustrate rather than test the claim.
Hosting activities constitute abstract labour (in Postone's sense) organised over the reproductive sphere, so the relevant conflict is capital-versus-life rather than capital-versus-labour.
Assessment: A conceptual re-description rather than an empirical claim. It is internally coherent as a definition, but the use of Marxian categories is loose (home as 'fixed capital', host activities as 'variable capital'; 'surplus value for Airbnb' from a commission on a self-employed service).
Airbnb's model is built on economically precarious subjects and reflects precarity as a hegemonic mode of being governed in the current historical epoch.
Assessment: A broad societal conclusion that rests on the theoretical premise (C13) plus an unquantified sample of hosts; the empirical base cannot bear a claim about Airbnb's model as a whole, especially since the paper itself excluded the multi-listing hosts who dominate the platform.
Host work splits into material work (measurable, homogeneous, outsourceable) and immaterial work producing externalities, experiences and sociability (subjective, non-outsourceable because the host's own life is the source of value).
Assessment: Useful analytical typology. The claim that immaterial work cannot be outsourced is asserted; the author's own footnote notes the market is dominated by multi-listing operators who evidently do produce guides and guest communication at scale, which suggests these tasks can be standardised and delegated.
Hosting generates more precarious lives (e.g. sleeping in a closet, 'urban nomads' leaving home at weekends, no bathroom access).
“Como puede verse, la actividad genera vidas más precarias.”
Assessment: Extreme vignettes chosen as 'the most striking' are generalised ('la actividad genera vidas más precarias'). They show that hosting can be associated with hardship, but causality is unclear: these hosts may host because they were already precarious (the author says they need the income to pay rent or avoid eviction).
All hosts recognise that their Airbnb activity is a form of work, contradicting Airbnb's presentation of hosting as hospitality.
“Pero todos los anfitriones reconocen que su actividad en Airbnb es una forma de trabajo”
Assessment: Seven quotes support that many interviewees see hosting as work (which is unsurprising); the universal 'all' is not substantiated because no counts are given.
Hosts symbolically produce value by curating profiles and neighbourhood guides that sell a 'live like a local' authenticity, creating a market-shaped simulacrum of their home and neighbourhood.
Assessment: Quotes directly describe these practices; the interpretation (simulacrum, commodification of everyday life) is a reasonable reading for a descriptive-interpretive claim of this kind.
Host-guest socialisation becomes an instrumental economy: hosts perform (sometimes feigned) enthusiasm to earn reputation, calculate the return on socialising, and seek to limit it when it is unpaid.
Assessment: Five interview excerpts directly illustrate calculated or avoided socialising. The generalisation that 'the main motive of interaction is economic' for hosts in general goes beyond the evidence but is well illustrated for the quoted cases.
Hosting invades hosts' free, affective and leisure time because they must always be connected; platform response times are very short.
Assessment: Table 1 shows a large share of hosts answering within an hour (31-58%), consistent with pressure to respond, but response-time badges do not measure time burden, and 15-36% fall in an undefined 'other' category. The USD 500 cinema anecdote is a single case.
Retirees are the fastest-growing socio-demographic profile on Airbnb, and retired women have the best ratings and highest digital reputation.
“El perfil sociodemográfico que más está creciendo en Airbnb es el de los jubilados y jubiladas”
Assessment: No source, data or citation is given. (Similar statements circulated in Airbnb's own communications, which would in any case be an interested source.)
No evidence cited in the paper for this claim. · Issues: I4
Airbnb is a very profitable activity for hosts but generates stress and anxiety in most hosts.
“si bien la actividad en Airbnb es una actividad muy rentable económicamente, se trata de una actividad que genera estrés y angustia en la mayoría de anfitriones”
Assessment: Neither profitability nor the prevalence of stress ('most hosts') is quantified or documented.
No evidence cited in the paper for this claim. · Issues: I2I3
C14weaksupportingempirical causalnon trivialp. 18
Hosts turn to Airbnb to recover purchasing power lost since 2008.
Assessment: Sourced to Airbnb's own advocacy site; interview material shows money is the primary motive ('por encima de todo, la pasta') but not that it compensates crisis-related losses, and half of the interview cities (NY, SF) had a very different post-2008 trajectory from Spain.
Qualitative. Theory-driven interpretive essay illustrated with excerpts from semi-structured interviews; one descriptive table from scraped platform data.
Scope: Peer-to-peer hosts (not multi-listing hosts) in four global cities, c. 2016-2018.
Methods
Interpretive reading of interview excerpts through a pre-specified theoretical lens
Descriptive tabulation of InsideAirbnb response-time categories
Transparency notes
No information on number of interviewees, interview period, sampling/recruitment, interview guide, coding or analysis procedure, or host characteristics (income, tenure, listing type). InsideAirbnb snapshot dates not given.
Limitations acknowledged by the authors
Footnote 1 restricts the analysis to hosts whose activity follows peer-to-peer principles, acknowledging that multi-listing hosts dominate the market.
Data sources
ID
Source
Type
Description
Coverage
Loc.
D1
Semi-structured interviews with Airbnb hosts
interviews
Interviews with 'decenas' (dozens) of hosts; excerpts labelled by city and number (e.g. Nueva York-15, San Francisco-16, Madrid-15).
New York, San Francisco, Madrid, Barcelona. Number, dates, recruitment and selection criteria not reported; labels imply at least ~16 interviews in NY and SF and 15 in Madrid.
pp. 3-4
D2
InsideAirbnb
scraped platform data
Host response-time categories by city.
Madrid, Barcelona, New York, Amsterdam, Paris, London; snapshot date not reported.
p. 17, Tabla 1
D3
Social theory literature
secondary literature
Foucault, Laval & Dardot, Brown, Gago, Postone, Lorey, Butler, Pérez Orozco, Precarias a la deriva, Zafra.
passim
Evidence items (7)
ID
Kind
Description
Loc.
Source
Used by
E1
interview excerpts
Seven short quotes in which hosts describe hosting as 'work' / 'a lot of work'.
⚠ Supports that some hosts perceive hosting as work; does not establish the author's claim that 'all' hosts do.
Quotes on instrumental, tiring host-guest socialising and strategies to limit it (NY-2, NY-1, SF-16, NY-9, NY-15) including the 'girlfriend experience' analogy.
NY host who slept in her closet for 2.5 years while renting her studio; SF host with one bathroom forced to find public toilets; Barcelona family of four who moved to grandparents' home whenever they got a booking; host who lost a USD 500 booking while at the cinema.
⚠ Selected as 'most striking' cases; illustrative, not indicative of prevalence.
Tabla 1: distribution of host response times (within an hour / a few hours / within a day / other) in six cities.
Within one hour: Madrid 57.63%, Barcelona 49.95%, New York 31.77%, Amsterdam 32.38%, Paris 30.50%, London 35.73%. 'Otro': 17.56 / 14.63 / 35.41 / 25.58 / 36.11 / 27.77%.
⚠ Snapshot date unknown; 'Otro' undefined (may include 'a few days or more' and missing values); includes three cities with no interviews.
Sujeto empresarial / empresario de sí mismo (entrepreneur of the self)
pp. 4-6
A subject who organises his/her life, time and assets as capital to be valorised, internalising market rationality.
borrowed
Foucault (2009); Laval & Dardot (2013); Brown (2015)
K2
Trabajo abstracto (abstract labour)
p. 6
Host activities count as abstract labour when they produce value, generate surplus for Airbnb, create a use-value consumed by a third party and are remunerated.
adapted
Postone (2006)
The operational criteria are the author's; the further mapping of the home onto 'fixed capital' and host activities onto 'variable capital' is a loose use of Marxian categories (variable capital is capital advanced to buy others' labour-power).
K3
Externalidades (externalities)
pp. 8-9
Symbolic add-ons (profile narrative, neighbourhood guides, attention, exclusivity) that the host adds to the lodging to increase its value.
adapted
Non-standard usage: in economics an externality is an unpriced effect on third parties; here it means value-adding extras that are in fact priced into the offer.
K4
Economía de la socialización / economía invisible del simulacro
pp. 11-14
Host-guest sociability becomes an instrumental, priced activity whose commercial nature must be concealed from the guest.
The only information is 'decenas' of semi-structured interviews in four cities. Number of interviews, recruitment, dates, host profiles (single room vs whole home, income, tenure, ownership), interview guide and analytic procedure are not reported, so representativeness and analytic saturation cannot be judged.
Impact on conclusions: Limits all empirical claims to 'illustrative' status.
I3majorcausal inferenceEconomic side of the thesis not measured; reverse causality unaddressedpp. 15-18
No income data are presented for the claimed reduction of economic precarity, and the vignettes suggest hosts were already precarious (hosting to pay rent or avoid eviction), so hardship may cause hosting rather than hosting causing hardship. No comparison with non-hosts or pre-hosting conditions.
Impact on conclusions: The causal 'trade-off' is plausible but not demonstrated.
I7moderatemissing counterevidenceTheory-first design without disconfirming cases
The theoretical lens is laid out before the data and excerpts are chosen to illustrate it. Hosts who enjoy hosting, who use it sporadically, or for whom it reduced stress are not discussed (except the note that initial social motives fade).
Impact on conclusions: Findings are best read as a theoretically informed interpretation rather than an inductive result.
I9moderatelogicScope tension between sample and conclusionp. 3 fn. 1; p. 18
Footnote 1 restricts the study to peer-to-peer hosts and acknowledges that multi-listing hosts control the market, yet the conclusion speaks of 'the Airbnb model' as built on precarious subjects.
Impact on conclusions: The conclusion should be limited to peer-to-peer hosts.
I5minorconceptualLoose use of economic/Marxian categoriespp. 6-9
'Externalities' is used for priced value-adding extras; the host's activities are called 'variable capital' and the home 'fixed capital' although no labour-power is purchased; surplus value 'for Airbnb' is not derived.
Impact on conclusions: Terminological; the descriptive content of the typology survives.
I6minormeasurementResponse-time table is a weak proxy and poorly documentedp. 17
Response-time categories are a platform metric not a measure of burden; the snapshot date is missing; the 'Otro' category (15-36%) is undefined; three of six cities are outside the interview sample.
Impact on conclusions: Table is consistent with, but does not demonstrate, permanent connectivity.
Scope internal = numbers printed in the document; cross paper = other corpus documents; external / replication = outside sources or re-analysis of original data (web mode only).
ID
Status
Scope
What was checked
Computation
Result
Loc.
Claims
V1
pass
internal
Each city column in Tabla 1 sums to 100%.
Madrid 57.63+14.56+10.25+17.56; Barcelona 49.95+21.73+13.69+14.63; NY 31.77+17.84+14.98+35.41; Amsterdam 32.38+23.00+19.04+25.58; Paris 30.50+17.33+16.06+36.11; London 35.73+21.58+14.92+27.77
Share of hosts responding within 24 hours (cumulative) vs the claim that response times are 'very short'.
Sum of first three rows per city.
Madrid 82.44%, Barcelona 85.37%, New York 64.59%, Amsterdam 74.42%, Paris 63.89%, London 72.23%. One-hour response is the modal category only in Madrid and Barcelona; in NY and Paris 'Otro' is the largest category.
Evaluation frame: A theoretical-interpretive essay in critical social theory. The appropriate standard is not statistical representativeness but (a) conceptual coherence, (b) whether qualitative material genuinely illustrates the mechanisms proposed, and (c) whether conclusions are kept within what illustrative material can bear. Empirical quantifiers ('all', 'most', 'fastest-growing') are nonetheless held to an evidential standard.
Dimension
Score
Rationale
conceptual clarity
3
Key concepts are clearly sourced; some (externalities, variable/fixed capital, abstract labour) are used loosely.
logical coherence
3
The argument flows consistently from premise to conclusion, but the conclusion extends to 'the Airbnb model' despite the sample being restricted to p2p hosts.
evidential support
2
Good illustrative quotes for work practices and sociability; the central trade-off, prevalence claims and demographic claims are not evidenced.
methodological rigor
2
No description of sampling or analysis; no disconfirming cases; one descriptive table used as a proxy.
transparency
1
Interview N, dates, selection, and data snapshot dates are all missing.
proportionality
2
Conclusions about precarity as a hegemonic mode of government go far beyond an undocumented set of interviews.
Strengths
Original framing of platform hosting as labour organised over the reproductive sphere.
Rich, concrete interview excerpts that make mechanisms tangible.
Clear typology of material vs immaterial host work.
Table 1 is internally consistent (columns sum to 100%).
Weaknesses
Undocumented interview sample and analysis procedure.
Unquantified universal/majority claims.
Economic-precarity reduction asserted, sourced to Airbnb marketing.
Conclusion generalises beyond the p2p hosts studied.
Report interview N, recruitment, dates and host characteristics.
Provide counts for how many interviewees expressed each theme.
Include income data or at least self-reported earnings and pre-hosting situation.
Discuss negative cases (hosts for whom the trade-off does not hold).
Links to the rest of the corpus
Later corpus papers that rely on this one
Gil & Sequera (2020): Distinction between peer-to-peer hosts and professional multi-listing hosts. robust
Provenance
Analyst: Claude (Anthropic), LLM-generated audit · 2026-11-08 · access: document only · text: text/gil_2019_recerca_hosts.txt · schema v1.1
No external sources were consulted (offline run). Figures are assumed to be correctly reported; claims[].external, citation checks and external/replication checks were not performed.
Page numbers refer to PDF pages (journal pagination = PDF page + 91).