Abstract
This dissertation examines the lived experiences of workers classified as self-employed whilst operating under conditions that substantially contradict genuine entrepreneurial independence. Through a comprehensive literature synthesis, the study investigates how modern contracting arrangements—particularly within the platform and gig economy—produce “pseudo-independence,” wherein workers bear the legal status of independent contractors yet experience intensive algorithmic and managerial control alongside significant risk-shifting. The analysis reveals a fundamental tension between the rhetoric of autonomy and the reality of constrained agency, wherein workers may choose when to log in but must comply with platform-determined prices, performance metrics, and behavioural standards. Furthermore, the research demonstrates that dependent self-employment systematically transfers economic, temporal, and social risks from organisations to individual workers, creating what scholars term “flexi-vulnerability.” The subjective experiences of these workers prove complex and contradictory, with many internalising entrepreneurial narratives whilst simultaneously experiencing psychological contract violations. The dissertation concludes that pseudo-independence represents a significant restructuring of employment relations that requires urgent regulatory attention and further empirical investigation across diverse sectoral and geographical contexts.
Introduction
The contemporary labour market has witnessed a profound transformation in the organisation of work, characterised by the proliferation of non-standard employment arrangements that defy traditional categorisations of employment and self-employment. At the centre of this transformation lies a growing cohort of workers who occupy an ambiguous position: legally classified as independent contractors or self-employed individuals, yet experiencing working conditions that more closely resemble dependent employment. This phenomenon, increasingly termed “pseudo-independence” or “dependent self-employment,” raises fundamental questions about the nature of work, the distribution of risk, and the adequacy of existing regulatory frameworks.
The rise of platform-mediated work, often described as the “gig economy,” has accelerated these developments considerably. Digital platforms such as Uber, Deliveroo, and various crowdworking intermediaries have constructed business models predicated upon classifying workers as independent contractors, thereby avoiding the obligations associated with employee status whilst maintaining substantial control over work processes and outcomes. This classification has profound implications for workers’ access to social protections, their exposure to market risks, and their capacity for collective organisation and voice.
The academic and social significance of this topic cannot be overstated. From an academic perspective, pseudo-independence challenges established theoretical frameworks in employment relations, labour law, and organisational studies, necessitating new conceptual tools for understanding contemporary work arrangements. Socially, the expansion of dependent self-employment raises pressing concerns about the erosion of labour standards, the individualisation of social risks, and the potential for a fundamental reconfiguration of the social contract between work and welfare. Practically, policymakers, regulators, and trade unions worldwide grapple with how to respond to employment arrangements that appear designed to circumvent established protections whilst maintaining the substance of employment relationships.
The International Labour Organization has identified the growth of non-standard employment as a key challenge for decent work globally, noting that such arrangements often correlate with reduced job quality, diminished social protection coverage, and weakened collective representation. Similarly, courts and tribunals across multiple jurisdictions have increasingly been called upon to adjudicate disputes concerning the employment status of platform workers, with landmark decisions in the United Kingdom, the European Union, and beyond recognising that formal contractual classifications may not reflect the substantive reality of working relationships.
This dissertation addresses these concerns by synthesising and critically analysing the existing empirical and theoretical literature on how workers experience control, risk-shifting, and pseudo-independence within modern contracting arrangements. By examining the mechanisms through which apparent autonomy coexists with hidden constraints, and by exploring the subjective dimensions of dependent self-employment, this study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of contemporary labour market dynamics and their implications for worker welfare and regulatory policy.
Aim and objectives
Aim
The primary aim of this dissertation is to critically examine how workers experience control, risk-shifting, and pseudo-independence within modern contracting arrangements, with particular attention to the platform and gig economy.
Objectives
To achieve this aim, the dissertation pursues the following specific objectives:
1. To synthesise existing literature on the mechanisms of control operating within purportedly independent work arrangements, including algorithmic management, performance metrics, and platform governance structures.
2. To analyse how economic, temporal, and social risks are transferred from organisations to workers classified as self-employed, and to examine the consequences of such risk-shifting for worker precarity and welfare.
3. To explore the subjective experiences of workers navigating pseudo-independence, including their interpretation of autonomy, their internalisation of entrepreneurial narratives, and their experiences of psychological contract violations.
4. To critically evaluate the concept of “constrained autonomy” and to assess the conditions under which self-employed workers experience meaningful versus illusory independence.
5. To identify the policy and regulatory implications arising from the analysis and to suggest directions for future research in this domain.
Methodology
This dissertation adopts a literature synthesis methodology, systematically reviewing and integrating existing empirical and theoretical scholarship to address the research aim and objectives. Literature synthesis represents an appropriate methodological approach when the research questions are broad in scope and when a substantial body of existing research requires consolidation and critical analysis to advance understanding.
The synthesis draws upon peer-reviewed journal articles, edited volumes, and grey literature from reputable sources including governmental bodies and international organisations. The selection of sources was guided by criteria of relevance, methodological rigour, and publication quality. Priority was accorded to empirical studies examining the experiences of workers in platform-mediated, gig, and other forms of dependent self-employment, as well as theoretical contributions that illuminate the conceptual dimensions of pseudo-independence, control, and risk.
The analytical approach involved thematic organisation of the literature, identifying key patterns, tensions, and gaps across studies. Three primary thematic clusters emerged from this process: mechanisms of control within purportedly independent work; risk-shifting and its consequences for precarity; and the subjective experience of pseudo-independence. Within each cluster, attention was paid to the diversity of findings across sectors, geographical contexts, and worker populations, enabling a nuanced synthesis that acknowledges both commonalities and variations in worker experiences.
The synthesis was informed by a critical realist epistemology, recognising that the experiences documented in the literature reflect both objective structural conditions and subjective interpretations shaped by discourse, ideology, and individual positioning. This epistemological orientation facilitated attention to both the material realities of dependent self-employment—including income insecurity, lack of protections, and surveillance—and the ideational dimensions through which workers make sense of their situations.
Limitations of the methodology include the reliance upon existing published research, which may reflect particular disciplinary, geographical, or sectoral biases. The platform economy literature, for instance, has predominantly focused on ride-hailing and food delivery services in North America and Western Europe, potentially limiting the generalisability of findings to other contexts. Furthermore, the synthesis is necessarily interpretive, requiring judgments about how to weight and integrate sometimes contradictory findings across studies.
Literature review
Algorithmic and managerial control under the guise of independence
A central finding from the literature concerns the intensive control mechanisms operating within work arrangements formally classified as independent. Platform workers, despite their legal designation as self-employed contractors, frequently experience what scholars have termed “algorithmic management”—a mode of workplace governance characterised by automated decision-making, continuous performance monitoring, and opaque evaluative criteria.
Shapiro (2018) identifies how on-demand economy platforms exercise substantial control over workers through their technical architecture, determining prices, allocating work opportunities, and establishing performance standards whilst simultaneously maintaining the discourse of worker independence. Workers in Shapiro’s study navigated this contradiction through strategies of “arbitrage,” seeking to exploit gaps and inconsistencies in platform systems to maximise their earnings and protect their autonomy. Nevertheless, these strategies operated within tight constraints established by platform design, limiting their transformative potential.
Wood et al. (2018) extend this analysis through a global study of gig economy workers, finding that algorithmic control produces a distinctive combination of autonomy and constraint. Workers experience temporal flexibility—the capacity to choose when to log in—but this flexibility is bounded by platform logics that incentivise working during peak periods and penalise low acceptance rates. The study introduces the concept of “algorithmic control,” distinguishing it from traditional forms of workplace surveillance through its combination of pervasiveness, opacity, and consequentiality for work allocation.
Ravenelle (2019) examines how platform workers themselves understand the relationship between control and autonomy, finding considerable variation in worker interpretations. Some workers actively rejected comparisons with Uber, emphasising their entrepreneurial agency and distinguishing their work from more heavily controlled platform arrangements. Others experienced their purported independence as illusory, recognising that platforms exercised decisive control over the terms and conditions of their work. These varying interpretations reflect not merely individual differences but also variations in platform design, occupational context, and labour market position.
López-Martínez, Haz-Gómez, and Deus (2023) contribute the concept of “false consciousness of autonomy” to describe situations wherein workers internalise platform rhetoric about independence whilst remaining subject to intensive control and surveillance. Their study of food delivery riders reveals how the discourse of “being your own boss” operates ideologically to obscure structural dependence and to individualise responsibility for outcomes that are substantially determined by platform policies and market conditions.
Constrained autonomy and meaningful independence
The literature reveals considerable nuance in understanding autonomy within dependent self-employment. Scholars increasingly distinguish between different dimensions of autonomy, recognising that workers may experience independence in some respects whilst being tightly constrained in others.
Pichault and McKeown (2019) propose an analytical framework distinguishing autonomy over work status, work content, and working conditions. Their analysis suggests that meaningful autonomy requires control over work content—the nature of tasks performed and the standards applied—rather than merely temporal flexibility. Independent professionals who can select clients, define project scope, and determine quality standards experience substantively different working lives from gig workers who exercise only limited choice over when to perform platform-determined tasks.
Abraham et al. (2021) reinforce this distinction through research on high-skilled independent workers, finding that temporal control alone is insufficient for experienced autonomy. Workers who could choose their hours but not their clients or work methods reported lower satisfaction and a weaker sense of independence than those with broader control. This finding challenges platform discourse that emphasises scheduling flexibility as the primary benefit of independent work, suggesting that such flexibility may function as a compensatory mechanism for absent autonomy in other domains.
Florin and Pichault (2020) develop an empirical typology of precariousness and autonomy, identifying distinct configurations in which workers experience varying combinations of job security, income predictability, and self-determination. Their analysis reveals that autonomy and precarity do not exist in simple inverse relationship; rather, workers may experience high autonomy alongside high precarity, low autonomy alongside relative security, or various intermediate configurations depending upon their occupational position, skill level, and market power.
Occhiuto (2017) examines how independent contractors in knowledge-intensive sectors “invest” in their independent status, developing strategies to manage uncertainty and build sustainable careers outside traditional employment. These workers exercise considerable agency in constructing their working lives, yet this agency operates within constraints imposed by client demands, market conditions, and the imperative to maintain employability through continuous skill development and reputation management.
Risk-shifting and the production of precarity
A second major theme in the literature concerns the systematic transfer of risks from organisations to workers through self-employment classification. Scholars identify multiple dimensions of risk-shifting, including economic risks associated with demand fluctuations and payment structures, temporal risks related to unpaid waiting time and schedule uncertainty, and social risks arising from exclusion from protective labour legislation and welfare systems.
Moore and Newsome (2018) provide a detailed analysis of risk-shifting in parcel delivery, documenting how dependent self-employment functions to transfer costs and risks onto workers. Delivery drivers classified as self-employed absorb the costs of vehicles, fuel, and maintenance whilst bearing risks associated with failed deliveries, traffic delays, and demand variability. The payment-by-piece structure means that workers effectively provide unpaid labour during periods of low demand or logistical difficulty, subsidising the operational flexibility of delivery companies.
Moisander, Gross, and Eräranta (2018) theorise risk-shifting through the lens of Foucauldian governmentality, arguing that dependent self-employment represents a technology of neoliberal governance that mobilises workers as “independent business owners” responsible for managing their own risks and maximising their own productivity. This analysis highlights how self-employment discourse functions to naturalise risk transfer, constituting workers as entrepreneurial subjects who should embrace uncertainty as opportunity rather than experiencing it as exploitation.
The exclusion from social protection constitutes a particularly consequential form of risk-shifting. Harris and Krueger (2015) document how self-employment classification in the United States excludes workers from protections including minimum wage guarantees, overtime pay, unemployment insurance, and employer-provided health coverage. Similar patterns obtain across multiple jurisdictions, with variations reflecting national welfare state configurations and regulatory frameworks.
Ravizki and Purnami (2023) conduct a comparative analysis of protections for independent self-employed workers in Indonesia and Europe, finding significant gaps in coverage across both contexts despite differing regulatory traditions. Their concept of “flexi-vulnerability” captures the simultaneous experience of flexibility and vulnerability characterising much dependent self-employment: workers may value schedule autonomy whilst experiencing income insecurity, lack of sick pay, and absence of dismissal protection.
Subjective experiences and psychological dimensions
The literature reveals complex and often contradictory subjective experiences among workers navigating pseudo-independence. Workers do not simply experience control and risk-shifting as external impositions but actively interpret and respond to their situations through available cultural and discursive resources.
Murgia and Pulignano (2019) examine the subjective experiences of “hybrid” self-employed workers who combine self-employment with periods of dependent employment or who occupy ambiguous positions between these categories. Their research identifies a prevalent experience of being “freely insecure”—exercising genuine agency and deriving satisfaction from independence whilst simultaneously experiencing anxiety about income stability, retirement provision, and protection against illness or injury. This tension is not experienced as contradiction requiring resolution but rather as an ongoing condition to be managed through practical strategies and psychological adaptation.
The internalisation of entrepreneurial narratives emerges as a significant theme. Many workers in the studies reviewed express pride in their autonomy, self-direction, and entrepreneurial status, even when objective conditions suggest substantial dependence and precarity. Occhiuto (2017) documents how independent contractors construct professional identities around independence, developing narratives that emphasise choice, skill, and self-determination whilst downplaying constraints and vulnerabilities. These identity constructions serve important psychological functions, enabling workers to maintain self-esteem and motivation in challenging circumstances.
However, other workers experience what Ravenelle (2019) terms “psychological contract violations”—a sense that the implicit promises of platform work have been betrayed when the rhetoric of entrepreneurship and flexibility collides with the reality of tight control, low pay, and arbitrary treatment. Workers who entered platform work expecting genuine independence may experience disillusionment and resentment when they discover the extent of platform control and the limited opportunities for advancement or security.
López-Martínez, Haz-Gómez, and Deus (2023) find evidence of both “false consciousness” and critical awareness among food delivery riders. Some workers genuinely believed themselves to be independent entrepreneurs despite substantial evidence of dependence, whilst others maintained a critical distance from platform discourse, recognising its ideological function whilst pragmatically engaging with platform work as a necessary means of income generation.
Collective representation and voice
The fragmentation and individualisation characterising dependent self-employment pose significant challenges for collective representation and worker voice. Traditional trade union models developed in the context of stable employment relationships face difficulties organising dispersed, heterogeneous, and legally “independent” workers.
Hickson (2023) analyses the gig economy through the lens of republican political theory, arguing that platform workers experience a form of domination—subjection to arbitrary power—that is inconsistent with genuine freedom. This domination is compounded by weak collective representation, leaving workers without effective mechanisms for challenging platform decisions or influencing the terms of their engagement. The combination of legal independence and practical powerlessness constitutes a distinctive form of unfreedom requiring new regulatory responses.
Mondon-Navazo et al. (2021) examine how freelance organisations and worker collectives attempt to address the individualisation of self-employed work. Their comparative study identifies various organisational forms—including cooperatives, professional associations, and social enterprises—that enable self-employed workers to access collective benefits, share risks, and exercise voice. These organisations represent important experiments in collective action under conditions of fragmentation, though their reach and effectiveness remain limited.
The literature suggests that the “be your own boss” discourse actively undermines collective identification and organisation. When workers understand themselves as independent entrepreneurs rather than as members of a working class with shared interests, the foundations for collective action are weakened. This ideological dimension of pseudo-independence thus has material consequences for the distribution of power between platforms and workers.
Discussion
The literature synthesis reveals that pseudo-independence represents a significant and consequential restructuring of employment relations, producing distinctive configurations of control, risk, and subjectivity that challenge traditional understandings of both employment and self-employment. This discussion examines the key findings in relation to the stated objectives and considers their theoretical and practical implications.
The paradox of controlled independence
The first objective concerned the mechanisms of control operating within purportedly independent work arrangements. The evidence demonstrates convincingly that platforms and other intermediaries exercise substantial control over workers classified as self-employed, utilising algorithmic management, performance metrics, and platform governance to direct work processes and outcomes. This control operates through distinctive mechanisms—automated, pervasive, and opaque—that differ from traditional workplace supervision whilst achieving comparable outcomes of labour discipline and standardisation.
The paradox of controlled independence emerges as a central finding. Workers experience what they interpret as autonomy—particularly temporal flexibility—whilst remaining subject to intensive surveillance, performance evaluation, and behavioural constraint. The table presented in the research summary effectively captures this paradox, illustrating how apparent gains in each dimension of work coexist with hidden constraints or losses. The capacity to choose when to log in is bounded by the necessity of working during peak periods; task variety is constrained by platform-determined standards; the discourse of entrepreneurship coexists with absent collective representation; and performance feedback operates as continuous surveillance.
This paradox has significant theoretical implications. Traditional frameworks for understanding employment relations typically conceptualise control and autonomy as inversely related: greater employer control implies lesser worker autonomy, and vice versa. The platform economy demonstrates that this relationship is more complex, that organisations can maintain intensive control whilst simultaneously offering certain forms of flexibility, and that these combinations can be experienced by workers in ambivalent and contradictory ways.
Risk transfer and structural precarity
The second objective addressed risk-shifting and its consequences for worker precarity. The literature provides extensive evidence that dependent self-employment systematically transfers risks from organisations to individual workers. Economic risks—demand fluctuations, payment uncertainty, cost absorption—fall upon workers who lack the resources and diversification to manage such risks effectively. Temporal risks—unpaid waiting, schedule unpredictability, the necessity of constant availability—erode the boundaries between work and non-work whilst denying workers compensation for time spent on standby. Social risks—exclusion from protective legislation, absence of sick pay and dismissal protection, lack of pension provision—expose workers to vulnerabilities that employment status would mitigate.
The concept of “flexi-vulnerability” effectively captures the dual character of this risk exposure. Workers experience flexibility as a genuine benefit, enabling them to manage competing demands, accommodate other commitments, and exercise some control over their working lives. Simultaneously, this flexibility is inseparable from vulnerability: income insecurity, lack of protection, and exposure to arbitrary treatment. The two dimensions are structurally linked rather than accidentally co-occurring; the flexibility that workers value is achieved through the very mechanisms that produce their vulnerability.
This finding has important implications for understanding precarity. Precarity is not merely an objective condition of insecurity but a structured relationship in which risks are unequally distributed between capital and labour. The expansion of dependent self-employment represents a substantial redistribution of risk, with organisations achieving cost savings and operational flexibility by transferring uncertainties to workers who are poorly positioned to bear them.
Subjectivity, identity, and the internalisation of entrepreneurship
The third objective explored the subjective experiences of workers navigating pseudo-independence. The literature reveals that workers are not passive recipients of structural conditions but active interpreters who make sense of their situations through available cultural resources. The entrepreneurial discourse pervasive in contemporary capitalism provides one such resource, enabling workers to construct identities around independence, self-direction, and personal responsibility.
The internalisation of entrepreneurial narratives serves important psychological functions, providing workers with sources of meaning, self-esteem, and motivation in circumstances that might otherwise be experienced as degrading or exploitative. Workers who understand themselves as entrepreneurs exercising choice can more readily tolerate insecurity and constraint than those who experience themselves as subordinated and powerless. This psychological dimension helps explain the persistence of pseudo-independent work despite its material disadvantages.
However, the literature also documents the limits of this internalisation. Workers experience psychological contract violations when platform rhetoric collides with lived reality, producing disillusionment and resentment. The “false consciousness” identified by some scholars coexists with critical awareness among other workers who recognise platform discourse as ideology whilst pragmatically engaging with platform work. This variation suggests that the hegemony of entrepreneurial discourse is incomplete and contested, leaving space for alternative interpretations and potentially for collective mobilisation.
The experience of being “freely insecure” captures the ongoing tension that many workers navigate. Rather than resolving the contradiction between freedom and insecurity, workers manage it practically and psychologically, developing strategies for coping with uncertainty whilst maintaining a sense of agency and self-worth. This management is effortful and imperfect, involving compromises and adaptations that may exact psychological costs even when they enable material survival.
Meaningful versus illusory autonomy
The fourth objective concerned the conditions under which self-employed workers experience meaningful versus illusory independence. The literature suggests that meaningful autonomy requires more than temporal flexibility; it requires control over work content, client relationships, and quality standards. Workers who can define what they do, for whom, and to what standard experience substantively different working lives from those who merely choose when to perform tasks determined by others.
This distinction has important implications for evaluating claims about the benefits of independent work. Platform discourse emphasises scheduling flexibility as the hallmark of independence, but this flexibility may function as compensation for absent autonomy in more consequential domains. Workers who can choose their hours but not their tasks, prices, or standards experience a truncated form of independence that fails to deliver the benefits traditionally associated with self-employment.
The evidence suggests that skill level, market position, and occupational context substantially influence the quality of autonomy experienced. High-skilled independent professionals with scarce expertise and strong market positions may achieve genuine independence, selecting clients, defining projects, and commanding premium rates. Low-skilled gig workers with abundant labour market competition and weak bargaining power experience autonomy primarily as responsibility for managing their own precarity within tight constraints established by platforms.
Policy and regulatory implications
The fifth objective concerned policy and regulatory implications. The analysis suggests that existing regulatory frameworks, premised upon a binary distinction between employment and self-employment, are inadequate for addressing the realities of pseudo-independence. Workers who are “self-employed on paper” but dependent in practice fall through regulatory gaps, lacking the protections associated with employment whilst lacking the genuine independence that self-employment implies.
Several regulatory responses have been proposed or implemented. Some jurisdictions have developed intermediate categories—such as the “worker” status in UK employment law—that extend certain protections to dependent self-employed workers. Others have sought to strengthen enforcement of existing employment classifications, treating controlled platform workers as employees notwithstanding contractual designations to the contrary. Still others have proposed portable benefits systems that decouple social protections from employment status, enabling independent workers to access benefits regardless of classification.
Each approach involves trade-offs. Intermediate categories may legitimise arrangements that would otherwise be recognised as employment, potentially weakening rather than strengthening worker protections. Strengthened enforcement depends upon regulatory capacity and political will that may be lacking in many contexts. Portable benefits systems require new funding mechanisms and administrative infrastructure that may prove difficult to establish.
The collective representation deficit presents particular challenges. Traditional trade unions struggle to organise dispersed, heterogeneous, and legally independent workers, and the entrepreneurial discourse prevalent in the gig economy undermines collective identification. New forms of worker organisation—cooperatives, digital unions, professional associations—offer promising experiments, but their scale and effectiveness remain limited.
Conclusions
This dissertation has examined how workers experience control, risk-shifting, and pseudo-independence within modern contracting arrangements, synthesising a substantial body of empirical and theoretical literature to address this question. The analysis demonstrates that being “self-employed on paper” commonly entails intensive control through algorithmic and managerial mechanisms, systematic transfer of economic and social risks to individual workers, and an ambivalent subjective experience characterised by valued autonomy alongside structural dependence.
The first objective, concerning mechanisms of control, has been achieved through detailed examination of algorithmic management, performance metrics, and platform governance. The evidence establishes that platforms exercise substantial control over nominally independent workers, directing work processes and outcomes through technical and organisational mechanisms that differ in form but not in function from traditional workplace supervision.
The second objective, concerning risk-shifting, has been achieved through analysis of how economic, temporal, and social risks are transferred from organisations to workers. The concept of flexi-vulnerability captures the structural linkage between the flexibility that workers value and the vulnerability that this flexibility produces, highlighting dependent self-employment as a mechanism for redistributing risk.
The third objective, concerning subjective experience, has been achieved through exploration of how workers interpret and respond to pseudo-independence. The literature reveals complex and contradictory experiences, with workers internalising entrepreneurial narratives, experiencing psychological contract violations, and navigating ongoing tensions between freedom and insecurity.
The fourth objective, concerning meaningful autonomy, has been achieved through analysis of the conditions under which independence is substantive rather than illusory. The evidence suggests that meaningful autonomy requires control over work content and client relationships, not merely temporal flexibility, and that skill level and market position substantially influence the quality of independence experienced.
The fifth objective, concerning policy implications, has been achieved through identification of regulatory challenges and potential responses. The analysis suggests that existing frameworks are inadequate and that multiple reform approaches—intermediate categories, enhanced enforcement, portable benefits—offer partial but imperfect solutions.
The significance of these findings extends across academic, social, and practical domains. Academically, the analysis contributes to understanding contemporary transformations in employment relations, demonstrating that platform-mediated work produces distinctive configurations of control and autonomy that challenge established theoretical frameworks. Socially, the findings illuminate how labour market restructuring transfers risks and costs onto workers whilst maintaining corporate flexibility and profitability, with implications for inequality, welfare, and social cohesion. Practically, the analysis informs regulatory and policy debates concerning how to address the challenges posed by dependent self-employment.
Future research should address several gaps identified in the analysis. Longitudinal studies examining how worker experiences evolve over time would illuminate trajectories of adaptation, exit, and persistence within pseudo-independent work. Comparative research across sectors and jurisdictions would clarify how contextual factors shape the experience of dependent self-employment. Studies examining the effectiveness of different regulatory interventions would inform evidence-based policy development. Research on emerging forms of collective organisation among self-employed workers would contribute to understanding possibilities for worker voice and representation.
The phenomenon of pseudo-independence represents neither a temporary aberration nor an isolated sectoral development but rather a significant and potentially durable restructuring of employment relations with consequences for workers, organisations, and societies. Understanding and responding to this restructuring represents an urgent scholarly and practical challenge to which this dissertation has sought to contribute.
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