Caring in the Gig Economy: A Relational Perspective of Decent Work
从工人视角出发，研究零工经济中平台、工人与客户之间的社会互动和关系如何影响体面工作，发现工人通过互惠、回应性和团结等关系策略来平衡自我关怀与关怀他人。
The rapidly expanding gig economy has been criticized for creating precarious and indecent working conditions. These critiques draw on decent work debates centred on employment classification, regulation and platform fairness, with less focus on the interactions between workers, platforms and clients, which are central to the experience of platform-mediated work. This article adopts a worker-centric relational perspective to explore decent work in the gig economy. Drawing on the experiences of workers in platform-mediated domestic care work, the insights from this study highlight the importance of social interactions and relationships, using an ethics of care lens, to elucidate how relational aspects shape workers’ experiences. The findings reveal platform workers centre mutuality of interests, responsiveness and reciprocity, attentiveness and solidarity to maintain a balance of care (care-for-self and care-for-others) when negotiating platform-mediated care work. This article contributes relationality as a key dimension of decent work currently overlooked in studies exploring gig work arrangements.