Publications

This study examines the transformation of creative labor within the gig economy, focusing on the interconnected dimensions of wellbeing, identity formation, and collective organizing. The expansion of digital platforms has fundamentally reshaped creative work by introducing task modularization, algorithmic management, reputational systems, and data-driven surveillance. While gig work offers flexibility, autonomy, and expanded market access for creative professionals such as writers, designers, musicians, filmmakers, and digital artists, it simultaneously intensifies precarious working conditions characterized by income instability, long working hours, weak social protection, and blurred work-life boundaries. The study explores how these conditions affect the mental health and professional identities of creative workers, particularly in atypical and fragmented employment arrangements. It further investigates how workers negotiate self-expression, authenticity, and professional legitimacy within platform-mediated environments that reward visibility, ratings, and constant productivity. The research also analyses emerging forms of solidarity and collective action among creative gig workers, including digital activism, worker cooperatives, grassroots organizations, online communities, and platform-based alliances. Through comparative examples from Africa, Europe, and Asia, the study highlights both the challenges and innovative responses shaping contemporary creative labor. The findings demonstrate that despite the fragmentation and surveillance embedded in platform economies, creative workers continue to develop new forms of resistance, cooperation, and mutual support. The study concludes that sustainable creative labor in the gig economy requires stronger labour protections, transparent platform governance, enhanced social protections, and inclusive cultural policies capable of safeguarding workers’ wellbeing, autonomy, and collective rights in rapidly evolving digital environments.