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      The Side Hustle Safety Net: Precarious Workers and Gig Work during COVID-19

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          Abstract

          While social distancing measures are essential in limiting the impact of a pandemic, such measures are often less feasible for low-income groups such as precarious workers who continue to travel on public transit and are less able to practice social distancing measures. In this paper, based on in-depth remote interviews conducted from April 2020 through June 2020, with more than 130 gig and precarious workers in New York City, we find that precarious workers experience three main hurdles in regard to accessing unemployment assistance that can be broadly categorized as knowledge, sociological, and temporal/financial barriers. Drawing on worker interview responses, we have named these responses: (1) Didn’t Know, (2) Didn’t Want, and (3) Can’t Wait. These challenges have led workers to turn to gig and precarious work, further highlighting the inequities of the pandemic. As a result, for some workers, so-called “side hustles” have become their primary social safety net.

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            Culture in Action: Symbols and Strategies

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              Good Gig, Bad Gig: Autonomy and Algorithmic Control in the Global Gig Economy

              This article evaluates the job quality of work in the remote gig economy. Such work consists of the remote provision of a wide variety of digital services mediated by online labour platforms. Focusing on workers in Southeast Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, the article draws on semi-structured interviews in six countries (N = 107) and a cross-regional survey (N = 679) to detail the manner in which remote gig work is shaped by platform-based algorithmic control. Despite varying country contexts and types of work, we show that algorithmic control is central to the operation of online labour platforms. Algorithmic management techniques tend to offer workers high levels of flexibility, autonomy, task variety and complexity. However, these mechanisms of control can also result in low pay, social isolation, working unsocial and irregular hours, overwork, sleep deprivation and exhaustion.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                (View ORCID Profile)
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                Journal
                Sociological Perspectives
                Sociological Perspectives
                SAGE Publications
                0731-1214
                1533-8673
                October 2021
                June 02 2021
                October 2021
                : 64
                : 5
                : 898-919
                Affiliations
                [1 ]The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA
                Article
                10.1177/07311214211005489
                e823b587-c85d-4cb9-969f-aba6394d2876
                © 2021

                https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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