Accounting for Absences and Ambiguities in the Freelancing Labour Relation

Abstract

Research in economic geography has focused on the shift away from the standard employment relationship in the West; yet within these debates, non-standard work is an amorphous stand-in for many kinds of labour. Our aim is to account for absences and ambiguities within one form of non-standard work – freelancing – to make the contours of this work more visible and to understand why a growing sector of the labour market is not well measured, protected or understood. Working from a Canadian case study, we first examine the conflicting ways freelancing is statistically measured, using an umbrella of intersecting terms that refer to labour or workers. Second, we critically review how freelancing is (not) legislated, organised and protected, areas of mediation which often still presume a standard employment relationship. Finally, we consider how the identity of ‘freelancer’ is lived, through freelancers' complex yet partial definitions that embrace flexibility and constraint.