Dominant depictions of dependent self-employment

To review what is known about dependent self-employment, this chapter analyses the small but growing literature on the grey zone of employment that lies between genuine self-employment and pure dependent employment, and outlines the dominant theorization of dependent self-employment as a rapidly growing form of precarious work conducted by marginalized lower-skilled workers and resulting from outsourcing and subcontracting by large corporations closely affiliated with the advent of online platforms and mobile applications. In this chapter, each component of this dominant theorization is reviewed by examining both the widespread existence of each assumption and the current evidence available to support it. This reveals that the evidence to support these strong narratives about dependent self-employment is often very weak and far from conclusive.