Under-the-radar female migrants in Spain as a user moral economy: collective agency in the platform economy

Abstract

This article examines how undocumented Latin American migrant women in Spain collectively appropriate WhatsApp to navigate intersecting challenges of irregular status, gendered precarity, and exclusion from formal labor protections. Using the lens of the user moral economy, it asks how everyday digital practices produce solidarity, transparency, and fairness while confronting platform and institutional power. The study foregrounds collective agency to show how informal, trust-based networks compensate for the opacity of bureaucracies and asymmetries of algorithmic systems, enabling information sharing, mutual aid, and mobilization that reconfigure platform use toward community survival and dignity. Qualitative, multi-site design combining: (1) 17 semi-structured interviews with Latin American migrant women (regular/irregular status); (2) participant observation in weekly non-governmental organization (NGO) workshops (∼20 participants); and (3) non-participant observation of a closed WhatsApp group (1,437 text interactions, 479 visuals, 1,151 emojis). Data were transcribed, anonymized, and analyzed through thematic analysis with inductive and deductive coding; codes were mapped to four user moral economy elements. Trustworthiness was enhanced via triangulation, a collaboratively developed codebook, intercoder reliability (Cohen’s kappa), member checking, and reflexive journaling. Ethical safeguards (consent, confidentiality) and secure, access-controlled storage were prioritized for a high-risk population. Four interlinked dynamics structure these women’s digital practices: (1) transparency and information sharing (legal procedures, services, jobs); (2) fairness and mutual aid (redistribution, emotional support, housing/work leads); (3) collective agency and tactical appropriation (closed, trust-based groups to mitigate surveillance/exclusion); and (4) repurposing algorithms for community goals (coordination, rapid mobilization). WhatsApp offers an infrastructure that allows them to offset institutional opacity and asymmetries. Yet vulnerabilities persist: precarity, data/privacy risks, and regulatory gaps that exclude undocumented workers. Digital solidarity coexists with ongoing exposure to algorithmic and legal harms. The study advances user moral economy theory within platform studies by evidencing everyday algorithmic resistance in private messaging ecosystems. It reframes undocumented women not as passive technology users but as collective actors who co-produce alternative moral orders – transparency, reciprocity and care – within platform constraints. Empirically, it contributes rare, granular evidence on undocumented women’s digital labor ecologies in Spain. In practice, it informs NGOs, policymakers, and platform designers on how to support collective agency and extend protections regardless of legal situation, bridging regulation with lived realities in the gig/platform economy.