‘Be Your Own Boss?’ Explaining Variation in Worker Response to the Gig Economy's Ideology in the Global North and South

ABSTRACT The proponents of app‐based, algorithmically mediated employment seek to create an easily transferable uniform labour process around the world. These apps classify their workers as independent contractors coupled with the ideological pitch that they will be ‘their own boss’. This model is designed to avoid adhering to employment regulations, but it also effectively appeals to low‐wage workers with historically negative experiences in the labour market. This paper explores how the worker experience and ideological pitch of app‐based employment varies in different socio‐cultural and political contexts. Apps, we argue, may strive for uniformity but they are shaped by local conditioning. Utilising theories of the construction of the labour process, governmentality and racial platform capitalism we explore how app work is conditioned in four cities in the global north and south, demonstrating how place shapes algorithmic management and worker resistance. We point to the role of labour market informality in the south as a primary dynamic shaping divergent responses in our cases.