Making a Living: The Digitization of <i>Rebusques</i> Among Colombians

ABSTRACT This article examines making a living through the digitization of rebusque , a Colombian term for practices within the informal economy. Drawing on multi‐sited digital ethnography conducted between 2020 and 2025 with Colombian immigrants in Chile and in Colombia, I show how rebusques became central to economic survival during the COVID‐19 pandemic. Their digitization demonstrates how people secure income beyond the state and formal labor markets. The article focuses on two dimensions: first, the choreographed use of freely available applications and social media to build and sustain markets; second, the household as a site of production, labor, and care. I argue that the digitization of rebusque should be understood as a bottom‐up process through which people adapt existing digital technologies and infrastructures to support informal economic activities, rather than primarily through participation in platform‐based employment. At the same time, these transformations take shape both in contrast to and in emulation of platform‐based ventures.