Self-employment as atypical or autonomous work: diverging effects on political orientations

Abstract

It is often held that the self-employed are an economically conservative, political right-wing class. Previous studies, however, have primarily dealt with self-employed workers as a relatively monolithic social class with shared interests as entrepreneurs and (potential) employers. But, with its recent rise, self-employment has developed into a heterogeneous employment type, with a growing number of dependent and precarious self-employed. In this article, the political preferences of people in self-employment are compared to the preferences of employees on temporary contracts. In doing so, hypotheses are tested from both classic theories on class voting, as well as theories on job precariousness and labor market vulnerabilities. For this purpose, European Social Survey Round 4 (ESS-4) data on eight West European countries are analyzed. The findings suggest that particular segments of self-employment share the characteristics of other forms of ‘atypical’ work, not only with respect to labor market insecurities, but also regarding the political orientations associated with such insecurities.

A “Hijacked Salaried Status” in French Cooperatives of Freelance Workers: The Political Meaning of Shifts Between Standard and Non-standard Employment

“…The second variable is conflictuality 26 : perceiving and situating oneself in social conflictuality appears not only when the interviewees talk about what they experience in the workplace but also through general considerations. This complements Jansen's analysis, showing that the self-employed develop different political viewpoints depending on their position inside the labor market and the risks associated with it (Jansen, 2016). In the interviews, we can see the clear awareness that entrepreneurs have of their position in the social strata and how they adapt their entrepreneurial strategy to combine the rules of the BEC with their own interests (see Figure 2).…”

More than self‐interest: Why different classes have different attitudes to income inequality

“…1674–1675), who argue that people who enjoy discretion and autonomy in their jobs generalize these experiences to other spheres of life, inducing a tendency towards right‐wing ideology in the economic domain. Jansen (2019, p. 11) also argues that job autonomy can be associated with opposition to redistribution and other government interventions. However, while professional and managerial classes generally have more autonomy than the working class (e.g., Erikson & Goldthorpe, 1992; Evans, 1992), work autonomy is a particularly important source of difference between the self‐employed and the working class.…”

The lose-lose dilemmas of Barcelona’s platform delivery workers in the age of COVID-19

“…Insofar as this topic seems to be currently very trendy, which has led to rapid expansion of the existing scholarship, the in-depth descriptions provided by Srnicek ( Srnicek, 2016 ) and Scholz ( Scholz, 2017 ) on how these new labor forms are shaped still stand as seminal works. They shed light on how “the emergence of labor flexible forms has produced a new type of self-employed worker, one that even if autonomous in many aspects as his predecessor (schedule, low social protection) is, indeed, much closer to the temporary worker: precarious, involuntary, dependent.” ( Jansen, 2019 ). …”

“…“the emergence of labor flexible forms has produced a new type of self-employed worker, one that even if autonomous in many aspects as his predecessor (schedule, low social protection) is, indeed, much closer to the temporary worker: precarious, involuntary, dependent.” ( Jansen, 2019 ).…”