Are You Really Your Own Boss? Flexi-Vulnerability and False Consciousness of Autonomy in the Digital Labor Culture of Riders

Abstract

In the European Union, over 28 million people work through more than 500 available digital platforms, and it is estimated that by 2025, this number will reach 43 million. However, we lack up-to-date and sufficient data on employed individuals, as platforms practice a policy of non-disclosure of data. This paper focuses on the so-called location-based platforms and specifically the figure of the rider, understood as the individual who, through a commercial or labor relationship with a company, performs tasks such as the delivery of goods to end customers. By conducting 143 surveys and 15 in-depth interviews with riders, we identified a series of characteristics that allow us to analyze this archetype of contemporary work–digital relations and delve deeper into relevant questions related to this figure, which have to do with the modality linked to the performance of their activity (self-employed or salaried), the levels of job satisfaction with respect to their activity, or the strategies for work or personal conciliation. Specifically, we focus on those discourses that refer to the characteristics of flexibility and autonomy inherent to this type of work, analyzing a heterogeneity of discourses that explain, on the one hand, a situation of precariousness and, in other cases, a job opportunity and a self-employment strategy, introducing the idea of flexi-vulnerability understood as a concept that captures the dual nature of flexibility and vulnerability experienced by individuals who work as self-employed in the so-called “gig” economy.