Paper Short Abstract:

Despite the mounting criticism of the gig economy, entrepreneurial discourses and practices are still celebrated by politicians, media and workers. This paper draws on ethnographic work with food couriers and explores how workers mobilise entrepreneurial aspirations to assess their masculinity.

Paper Abstract:

Work on food delivery platforms is characterised by increasing vulnerability and an over-representation of a racialised male workforce comprised of (undocumented) migrants. Despite the mounting criticism of the gig economy model, entrepreneurial discourses and practices are still celebrated, produced and reproduced by politicians, mainstream media and workers alike. This paper draws on a five-year ethnographic work with food couriers in three European countries and explores how platform workers mobilise entrepreneurial aspirations to assess their masculinity in and beyond the workspace. The lack of citizen rights and economic precarity often impacts the entrepreneurialism espoused by food couriers. Against the symbolic damage to their entrepreneurial masculinity, the paper maps the social navigation skills these workers deploy to carve alternative, yet still hegemonic, forms of masculinity.