Perceptions of Precariousness and Entrepreneurship among Informal Workers in the Platform Economy

This essay explores how Brazilian workers engaged in modalities of informal labour, who make intensive use of social media, attribute meaning to the concepts of precariousness and entrepreneurship. The paper draws on over a decade of research with workers across various segments of the service sector (including events, beauty, transportation, domestic cleaning, food production, and sales) and employs a combination of research methods, including ethnographic observation, systematic monitoring of social media, in-depth interviews, and focus groups. The empirical data presented in this essay reveal a discrepancy between the definitions of entrepreneurship and precariousness predominantly found in the social sciences literature and those observed in the field. The analysis of the meanings of precarity and entrepreneurship among informal workers suggests a triumph of the individual over the collective – a shift possibly tied to new technological ecosystems that have, in recent years, taken on infrastructural dimensions.