Peter van Eerbeek, from Karlstad University, is a CareNet visiting scholar working on a doctoral thesis on platform health.

Peter van Eerbeek researches labor’s role in shaping the geographies of capitalist production and social reproduction, amongst others trough engagement with platform work and labor migration.  His PhD project focuses on healthcare platform companies (HPCs) in the Swedish public healthcare system. These HPCs expanded rapidly since 2016 by offering app-based consultations via video and chat, matching healthcare professionals and patients. The project aims to analyze the role played by HPCs in the ongoing restructuring of the Swedish public healthcare system and its geographies, and how agency and choice among healthcare professionals play into this restructuring. Theoretically, it draws on concepts from labor geography, digital geography, and feminist geography, as well as research on platform capitalism and the gig economy.

He recently published the first article of his compilation thesis titled “Healthcare platform companies and (dis-)embedding strategies: restructuring the Swedish public primary care”. His research stay with the CareNet research group will be dedicated to working on new articles. Based on analyzing in-depth interviews with healthcare professionals and trade union representatives, these articles intend to shed light on why healthcare professionals engage in healthcare platform work and what this may mean for healthcare professionals’ labor agency. During his visit, he will also organize seminars on his research topics.

Previously, Peter has also researched seasonal labor migration for the Thai-Swedish wild berry industry, focusing on the multisited embeddedness of translocal migrant brokers at the site of recruitment in Thailand and the site of work in Sweden.

About him

Peter van Eerbeek is a doctoral student in Human Geography at the Department of Geography, Media and Communication, Karlstad University, Sweden. He has worked as a research assistant and studied spatial planning at Umeå University, and was awarded the Gösta Skoglunds prize for the best master’s thesis in regional science. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science from the University of Amsterdam. He is affiliated with the Centre for Geomedia Studies and the Graduate School on Sustainable Societal Transformation.