Full Description
An overview of how graphic designers in India use global platforms.
Digital freelance platforms promise workers flexibility, independence, and access to a global labor market. But what does organizing and positioning oneself in this environment look like? Global Platform Work focuses on the everyday lives of graphic designers in India who use gig platforms to connect to a global client base. Drawing on interviews, observations, and photo diaries, Anna Oechslen describes how important it is for gig workers to constantly put themselves in a positive light, build relationships, and adapt to an ever-changing work environment. In doing so, she formulates gig work as making and sustaining relationships and sheds light on everyday practices that common understandings of work often leave unconsidered.
Contents
1. Introduction
1.1 Background and context
1.2 Research problem
1.3 Research questions
1.4 Conceptual framework: Assembling volatile connections
1.5 Methodology
1.6 Argument and structure of the dissertation
2. Literature Review: Lines of Transformation in the Gig Economy
2.1 Overview: Dimensions of platform work
2.2 Online platforms and the transformation of work
2.3 Gaps and blind spots in the literature on platform work
3. Conceptual Framework: Work as Practices of Assembling .
3.1 De-centring economic productivity: Work beyond paid employment
3.2 Platform-mediated work from a global assemblage perspective
3.3 Working definition of practices of assembling
4. Research Approach and Methodological Perspectives
4.1 Co-construction of research, researcher, and field
4.2 The lens of digital ethnography
4.3 Research process
4.4 Concluding reflections on methodology 5. Negotiating Value
5.1 What is the value of a logo? Negotiating fair rates
5.2 Investing in subjective value: Trade-offs and long shots
5.3 Process matters: Being valued as a creative professional
5.4 Synthesis: Heterarchical negotiations of value in platform work
6. Managing Emotions
6.1 Between thrill and frustration: managing one's own emotions
6.2 Emotional relations
6.3 "Finding you a designer you'll love": How platforms mediate emotions
6.4 Synthesis: Limited knowledge and volatile trust
7. Aligning Relations
7.1 Assembling the life-work continuum
7.2 Everyday practices of aligning relations in platform work
7.3 Synthesis: Ambiguous alignment
8. Synthesis: Negotiating Relations - Assembling Global Platform Work
8.1 Summary of findings and answers to research questions
8.2 Practices of assembling
8.3 Work in a volatile, complex, and opaque environment
9. Conclusion
9.1 Main contributions
9.2 Significance and implications
9.3 Limitations and directions for further research
