Gig Work, Telework, Precarity, and the Pandemic

Abstract

This issue examines technology-driven economic developments during the global COVID-19 pandemic in Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Specifically, the articles cover the ways that gig work, the platform economy, and remote work have evolved during the course of the pandemic. The issue leads with articles that chart the interplay of the platform economy with various facets of the pandemic from the inequalities and risks faced by gig workers to market forces shaping the commercialization of hosting platforms. The following articles concentrate on the ways in which specific structural conditions—digital infrastructure as well as the structure of the economy—influence the unequal distribution of telework in Uruguay and the relationship between informality and remote work opportunities across Latin America. The last two articles explore remote work in Asia and North America. In the first of these two articles remote work in Japan is examined in order to investigate the cultural sources of resistance to the adoption of remote work. In the concluding article, the remote work preferences of U.S. adults are analyzed as a function of technology usage (videoconferencing versus instant messaging) as well as sociodemographic and occupational attributes.