Freelancing globally: Upworkers in China and India, neo-liberalisation and the new international putting-out system of labour (NIPL)

This chapter presents a comparative study of Chinese and Indian freelancers who use the crowdsourcing platform Upwork. It examines (a) the extent to which online freelance work in developing economies represents 'decent work', and (b) how freelancers' participation in the global digital platform economy can be understood through the lens not just of neo-liberalism but also of the new international putting-out system of labour (NIPL), a concept we put forward to mean that digital work platforms can put out work from big firms, small businesses and individual clients directly to individual workers and small enterprises who telework from anywhere in the world. NIPL reverses the movement of work from home-based artisanal workshops to factories, as was evident during the industrial era, back to individuals in the current period of globalisation. Nonetheless, like the pre-industrial system, NIPL eliminates or reduces employers' costs, provides product market flexibility and stalls workers' collective action.