Flexibility or precarity: exploring transformative resilience amongst media and cultural freelance workers in Singapore

Purpose This article examines how freelance workers in Singapore’s media and cultural (M&C) sector cultivate resilience in relation to the precarity they face in their flexible work schemes. It examines how their acts of resilience and those of other organisational and government actors may contribute to or hinder transformation towards more sustainable working conditions. Design/methodology/approach A qualitative study was conducted involving 23 semi-structured interviews with home-based freelance workers in the media and cultural sector. This was complemented with an interview with a key stakeholder from the workers’ union organisation supporting freelancers and self-employed persons. Findings Precarious working conditions are the norm for workers in the sector. We identify various forms of individualised short-term resilience on the micro-level, where freelancers accept status-quo employment conditions and other actors enforce them to maintain or entrench precarity. However, some freelancers were able to work with other actors to enact longer-term practices of transformative resilience, entailing changes to their social-digital and/or spatial work spheres that helped mitigate precarious work conditions and achieve greater sustainability. Analysis of and further action by organisational and government actors on the meso-level is needed to move towards a sustainable transformation of the sector. Originality/value While existing literature has focused on the resilience of workers in the media and cultural sector, this study also highlights how government, client and other actors can contribute to the overall resilience of freelancers towards more sustainable sector transformation. In Singapore, studies on gig work have largely focused on platform delivery and ride-hail workers rather than M&C work.