Freedom, domination and the gig economy

ABSTRACT Employment practices in the gig economy have routinely been defended through the language of individual freedom. Indeed, this particular model of on-demand employment is often presented as removing constraints on the freedom to choose when, where and how to sell one’s labour, enabling individuals to exercise greater self-authorship over their working lives. In this article, however, I show how the particular conception of freedom that underpins this pro-gig work discourse functions to obscure significant threats to the liberty of gig workers. An alternative perspective, inspired by the republican tradition of political thought, reveals instead how the structural vulnerability of gig workers exposes them to extraordinary forms of domination, compromising their freedom. Relative to typical employees in advanced capitalist labour markets, the precarious legal and economic status of gig workers leaves them less free, with fewer institutionalised resources to disarm the multiple forms of dominating, arbitrary power to which they are vulnerable. To maximise freedom within existing capitalist labour markets, on this republican view, we should seek to (re)build the rights and protections available to workers, rather than promote the further normalisation of under-regulated and precarious gig work.


Introduction
In April 2016, the co-founder of Uber, Travis Kalanick, published a defence of the firm's 'gig economy' employment practices.People choose to work for Uber, Kalanick (2016) argued because they want to be their own boss.Drivers value their independencethe freedom to push a button rather than punch a clock, to use Uber and Lyft simultaneously, to drive most of the week or for just a few hours.
He even quoted one driver who had allegedly claimed, 'I would quit if they tried to make me an employee, because I value my freedom as an independent contractor too much' (Kalanick 2016 Italics in original).
This line of argument is far from unique.Alongside Uber, gig economy firms such as Deliveroo (2023), TaskRabbit (n.d.) and Upwork (2021) have echoed the idea that gig work provides 'freedom', 'flexibility' and the opportunity to 'be your own boss'.Indeed, it has been argued that appeals to worker 'freedom' and 'flexibility' are among the most commonly deployed in defence of the gig economy (Cano et al. 2021, p. 47), and represent a central motif of 'pro-gig work discourse' (Shibata 2020).But how should we assess these claims?Does working in the gig economy truly enable individuals to enjoy a greater level of freedom than typical employees in advanced capitalist labour markets?Or is this just an 'illusion of freedom' (Woodcock 2021, p. 35)?Does the gig economy, in fact, expose workers to significant threats against their liberty (for example, Chamberlain 2015, O'Shea 2020, Muldoon and Raekstad 2022)?In this article, I construct a novel, and nuanced, critique of the pro-gig work discourse; revealing how gig economy practices compromise worker freedom within contemporary labour markets.
Adopting an applied political theory approach (McGrane and Hibbert 2019), I develop this critique in two stages.In the first half of the paper, I deploy conceptual resources taken from identifiable traditions of political thought in order to better understand the particular idea of freedom communicated within the pro-gig work discourse.In particular, I highlight the alignment between the pro-gig work discourse and market freedom theory (see MacGilvray 2011, O'Shea 2020), showing how these share two key concerns: non-interference and self-authorship.
To be clear, I do not mean to suggest that exponents of pro-gig work discourse have consciously aligned their idea of freedom with a particular tradition of political theory.However, by locating them within wider theoretical literatures, we can better understand the political significance and meaning of these actors' discursive practices, and more accurately articulate the weaknesses of these ideas.
These weaknesses are critiqued in the second half of the paper, where I contrast the idea of freedom contained within the pro-gig work discourse with an alternative account derived from republican political theory (especially Anderson 2015, Gädeke 2020, Pettit 1997).From this republican perspective, we can more clearly see how the pro-gig work discourse functions to conceal distinct threats to the freedom of gig workers.The precarious legal and economic position of gig workers within the labour market leaves them disproportionately exposed to multiple forms of (interpersonal and structural) domination.
This republican account of worker freedom in the gig economy offers more than just a point of contrast and comparison with the pro-gig work discourse, it offers a superior assessment.The republican critique developed here shows why your status within employment relationships, and not just your ability to enter (and exit) them voluntarily, matter for individual liberty.It problematises the extraordinary levels of 'invigilation' (Pettit 2012, p. 61) available to gig economy employers.And it problematises how the legal and economic precarity of gig workers renders them structurally vulnerable to dominating arbitrary power, both within and beyond the employment relationship.
This article therefore deconstructs the central pillar of the pro-gig work discourse: the claim that the gig economy promotes greater freedom for workers than typical employment.This not only helps to challenge a dominant discursive practice related to the meaning of individual liberty within the contemporary labour market (and ensure this is not accepted prima facie), it also helps to reveal the alternative models for organising and governing work that better promote worker freedom.In particular, I argue that, in order to maximise republican freedom for workers within our existing capitalist labour markets, we should seek to enhance the sources of counter-dominating 'antipower' (Pettit 1996) available to workers (including legally enforceable labour rights and protections), rather than continue the propagation of under-regulated, and highly-precarious, gig economy practices.In other words, the paper provides a theoretical framework through which to challenge the normative assumptions that underpin the pro-gig work discourse, contest the meaning of economic liberty in the contemporary labour market, and condemn the rise of the gig economy.
In doing so, the article contributes to, and builds dialogue between, several bodies of literature.Firstly, the article complements existing critiques of the gig economy, and analyses of precarious work more broadly (for example, Kalleberg 2009, Srnicek 2017, Tan et al. 2021).The article builds upon and brings further analytical clarity to research that questions the levels of freedom available to gig workers (for example, Muldoon and Raekstad 2022, Shibata 2020, Woodcock 2021).And, in doing so, the article helps to offer a direct challenge to the normative claims found within progig work discourse, whilst in turn complementing wider consequentialist critiques of the gig economy, for example about its implications for worker health and wellbeing (for example, Wood et al. 2019).Secondly, the article uses the case of the gig economy to engage with wider debates within contemporary political theory regarding the meaning of economic freedom; in particular, contrasting the market freedom described by theorists such as John Tomasi (2012) with ideas of liberty drawn from the contemporary republican tradition.Here, the paper also contributes, finally, towards important intramural debates within republican political theory.In particular, debates about the (in)compatibility of republican liberty with capitalism (Anderson 2015, Gourevitch 2015, O'Shea 2019, Pettit 2006, Taylor 2017), as well as debates about the conceptualisation of structural domination (Bryan 2022, Cicerchia 2022, Coffee 2015, Gädeke 2020, Gourevitch 2015, Jugov 2020, Krause 2013, O'Shea 2019, Pettit 1997, 2012).

The gig economy
Whilst there is no single accepted definition of the gig economy, it has become particularly associated with the emergence of various online platforms, such as Uber, that allow individuals to access discrete jobs on-demand (Srnicek 2017).Often classified as self-employed freelancers or 'independent contractors' rather than employees, those working in the gig economy are hired and paid on a job by job basis: 'gigs' (Balaram 2017).
Having grown rapidly over recent years (for example, TUC 2021), the gig economy stands in sharp contrast to the typical model of employment established in many advanced capitalist economies during the mid-twentieth century.Under this model, most workers could expect regular working hours and a predictable income through an open-ended relationship with a particular employer; as well as access to various legally-enforceable rights and protections (Eurofound 2017).The gig economy, in comparison, offers workers much less secure, and more ad hoc, working arrangements.Moreover, the legal categorisation of gig work has meant that, in many cases, those working in the gig economy are excluded from rights and protections enjoyed by typical employees, such as a minimum wage, sick pay and protection against unfair dismissal (Albin andAdams-Prassl 2016, Fairwork 2021).
The rise of the gig economy can therefore be seen to exemplify a 'dualisation' or 'division of the labor market into separate submarkets, or segments' with contrasting conditions or characteristics (Reich et al. 1973, p. 359, see also Piore 1975).In particular, it illustrates the dualisation of advanced capitalist labour markets between those workers on standard employment contracts who still enjoy a relative level of job security and protection from labour market risk, and an ever-larger cohort of 'atypical' workers who don't (Schwander andHäusermann 2013, Seo 2021).Indeed, the gig economy has become somewhat synonymous with a wider shift towards more 'precarious work', that is, forms of employment that are 'uncertain, unpredictable, and risky from the point of view of the worker' (Kalleberg 2009, p. 2).The impact of insecure work, unstable incomes, and a lack of social benefits generates a distinct condition of vulnerability, or 'precarity', for those employed under such conditions (Millar 2017, pp. 2-3).In the words of sociologist, Pierre Bourdieu (1998, p. 82): 'Casualization profoundly affects the person who suffers it: by making the whole future uncertain'.
In the global north, the rise of the gig economy may represent something of a 'return to ordinary capitalism' (Schram 2015), that is, a return to the insecure employment practices of the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries after a brief period of relative security (Kalleberg 2009, pp. 3-6, Whiteside 2017).Meanwhile, in the global south, the rise of the gig economy risks further entrenching the precarity that has long been endemic for workers in developing economies, as well as undermining struggles to establish comparable labour standards to those enjoyed in the global north (Anwar and Graham 2021, Wood et al. 2019, Woodcock 2021).

Market freedom and the 'pro-gig work discourse'
Despite this association with more precarious employment, the gig economy has been routinely defended in terms that emphasise the supposed benefits for worker freedom.The gig economy, it is claimed, offers workers greater independence, flexibility and choice than other, more traditional, models of employment (for example, Bryce 2017, Feeney and Chiu 2021, Mulcahy 2016, Sinicki 2019).Here, Deliveroo (2023) provides a typical example, with the recruitment page of its UK website offering workers the 'freedom of flexibility', and the ability to choose 'when, how often and where' to work.Likewise, the online freelancing platform Upwork (2021) offers prospective workers 'flexible hours', 'self-management' and 'more freedom than when you work for someone else', while the TaskRabbit website (n.d.) promises workers 'the freedom and support to be your own boss'.
Crucially, such claims cannot necessarily be dismissed as empty corporate rhetoric, with evidence suggesting that this positive view of freedom in the gig economy is also shared by many gig workers themselves (Broughton et al. 2018, p. 85).
Saori Shibata (2020, p. 538) describes these claims as constituting a common 'pro-gig work discourse'; one that presents the gig economy as offering 'a new form of autonomous employment'.Ideas of freedom, flexibility and choice for workers are deployed to justify the gig economy model, alongside the idea that gig work enables individuals to wield greater control over their working lives and 'be their own boss'.This is contrasted, implicitly and explicitly, with typical models of employment, suggesting that there is a positive increase in the freedom available to gig workers compared to their counterparts elsewhere in the labour market.Shibata (2020, pp. 538-9) has argued this offers a 'fictitious' and 'one-sided' account of worker freedom in the gig economy, and risks 'concealing or neglecting' significant threats to individual liberty faced by gig workers.However, Shibata fails to sufficiently categorise the particular idea of freedom found within the pro-gig work discourse, or fully account for why this particular way of understanding liberty functions to obscure the weaknesses of the gig economy model.
By utilising an applied political theory approach, however, I argue we can identify an alignment or consistency between the pro-gig work discourse and the 'market freedom' tradition of political thought.Drawing this comparison allows us to make better theoretical sense of the normative ideas communicated (implicitly and explicitly) within the pro-gig work discourse; providing a robust basis from which to construct a theoretically nuanced critique of this discourse and challenge the dominant way that the value of worker freedom is understood in the gig economy.
Market freedom is defined as 'freedom to do what you want with what is yours and to enjoy the rewards or suffer the consequences' (MacGilvray 2011, pp. 181-2).Situated at the intersection of liberal and libertarian thought, significant expressions of this theoretical tradition have been recently identified in the works of James Nickel (2000) and John Tomasi (2012, see O'Shea 2020).
According to this tradition, capitalist labour markets represent an inherently valuable space within which we exercise our individual liberty, to engage in free exchange with others, and decide what we wish to do with our lives on the basis of our own ideas and interests.Our freedom as economic agents is both embodied and expressed in our participation in 'unregulated and unsupervised' market activity (MacGilvray 2011, pp. 1-3).Freedom for workers is protected by removing dictatorial constraints on their ability to navigate market risks and opportunities freely and independently.In contrast, any constraints on this ability, no matter how benign (for example, constraints associated with a defined minimum wage, guaranteed working hours or protection from arbitrary dismissal) would represent an offence against workers ability to meaningfully author their own economic lives (O'Shea 2020, p. 206).
In other words, market freedom comprises (i) freedom from interference; as a means to achieve greater capacity for (ii) self-authorship in the labour market.I will now address how the pro-gig work discourse similarly emphasises these two ideas in turn.

Freedom as non-interference
Across the pro-gig work discourse it is possible to identify a recurring association of freedom with an easing of constraintparticularly constraints that limit workers' ability to choose when, where and how they work.Indeed, workers in the gig economy are portrayed as being free to enter and exit labour relationships at will, and shape their working life independently, without any predetermined schedule or structure.For example, firms such as Deliveroo ( 2023) promise workers the chance to 'work when you want', and be 'in control of your own time'.Gig work is presented as something that individuals can start and stop at any time, and choreograph around other commitments.This is contrasted with more typical models of employment where key conditions such as hours of work are more rigidly defined by employers.For example, The Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices (2017, p. 37), an independent report commissioned by the British Government, suggests that gig economy platforms 'present individuals with greater freedom over when to work, and what jobs to accept or decline, than most other business models'.
Moreover, implicit to many defences of gig economy practices is the idea that the freedom of gig workers should be protected from the imposition of new constraints, for example as a result of updated state regulations.Indeed, the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank headquartered in Washington, D.C, recently warned against the introduction of new market regulations in the United States, arguing: 'There will be no more gig workers to protect if policymakers continue to pursue greater compensation, benefits, and other employee standards' (Feeney and Chiu 2021).
This can be seen to align strongly with market freedom theory.James Nickel (2000, p. 156), for example, describes freedom for workers as comprising 'liberties to employ one's body, time, and mind in productive activities of one's choice and according to the terms one has freely consented to'.As with the pro-gig work discourse, market freedom theory celebrates the capacity to choose where, when and how we work; and seeks to minimise external constraints on this choice.
This approach to thinking about freedom can be seen to rest upon a conception of freedom as noninterference, famously categorised by Isaiah Berlin (2002) as 'negative liberty'.This conception of freedom describes 'the area within which the subjecta person or group of personsis or should be left to do or be what he is able to do or be, without interference by other persons' (Berlin 2002, p. 169).
However, this conception of freedom as non-interference has particular implications for theorising about freedom within employment relationships and the wider labour market.Elizabeth Anderson (2015, p. 49) has highlighted how the pursuit of perfect negative liberty promotes the maintenance of a 'laissez-faire baseline' in the labour market, where: employers may hire and fire employees for any or no reason, and employees may accept a job offer and quit for any or no reason.Workers and employers are presumed to negotiate over the terms of employment against this baseline.
Any interference that upsets this baseline is considered, to a greater or lesser degree, an offence against freedom (Anderson 2015, p. 50).Indeed, such interference would limit the capacity for individuals to negotiate for themselves in the market on the basis of their own ideas and interests.
As a consequence, the market freedom tradition holds that 'a lack of regulation of the employment contracts people enter make them more economically free, whereas minimum terms and conditions within these contracts do not' (O'Shea 2020, p. 206).In other words, people should be free to choose for themselves how, where and when they work.The more that regulatory constraints on these choices (no matter how benign or paternalistic) can be minimised, the more freedom individuals can enjoy in the labour market.
Situating the pro-gig work discourse alongside established political theoretical literature on market freedom, therefore helps to gain a greater understanding of how the gig economy is being defended through the language of freedom as non-interference.The gig economy is presented as a valuable space within the contemporary labour market, where individual freedom from interference is extended and protected; and where external constraints on the range of this freedom are minimised.Gig workers, it is suggested, are freed from 'the shackles of 9-to-5 office work' (Sinicki 2019, p. 2); able to negotiate their own working schedules and arrangements flexibly; autonomously entering and exiting labour relationships as they please and unburdened by the interference of state regulations that may otherwise limit their range of choice within the market.Indeed, the pro-gig work discourse celebrates the gig economy model precisely because it reduces the constraints on workers' capacity to flexibly navigate the labour market, and the demands of their job, on their own terms.

Self-authorship
However, the pro-gig work discourse does not just suggest that the gig economy model removes various constraints; it also suggests that the gig economy model enables individuals to live their own lives.Indeed, it has become almost ubiquitous for gig economy firms to promise prospective workers the chance to 'be your own boss' (Bulian 2021, p. 108, Minchin 2020, Ravenelle 2019, p. 182).
This second element of the pro-gig work discourse echoes the ideas of the political theorist, John Tomasi (2012), who reasons that if individuals should have the economic liberty to choose their occupation, they should also be free to decide other important aspects of their working life, such as the terms and conditions of their employment contracts, their working hours and so on.Failing to respect individuals' freedom to choose such conditions for themselves would deny them the autonomy to be 'authors of their own lives' (Tomasi 2012, p. 77).Tomasi (2012, p. 110) concedes that the state could legitimately have a role in regulating against workplace conditions that might risk the health and safety of employees.However, beyond this, he rejects any patronising, paternalistic forms of constraint on individuals' choices and actions within the labour market.Interfering in this free market wage-labour exchange would erode a special form of self-esteem that comes when people recognize themselves as central causes of the particular lives they are livingrather than being in any way the ward of others, no matter how well meaning, otherregarding, or wise those others might be.(Tomasi 2012, p. 61) In particular, Tomasi identifies exposure to economic risk, and the freedom to navigate this risk for oneself, as being critical to the exercise of meaningful self-authorship.He argues that, whilst some forms of tax-funded safety nets may be justifiable (Tomasi 2012, p. 109), many contemporary models of social provision 'insulate people from economic risks', and deny them 'opportunities to feel the special sense that they have done something genuinely important with their lives' (Tomasi 2012, p. 80).Indeed, he concludes that 'experience of risk seems to be an essential precondition for … self-respect' (Tomasi 2012, p. 80); that the process of navigating economic risk allows individuals to 'take pride in knowing that their life is significantly one of their own creation' (Tomasi 2012, p. xiii).
Within the pro-gig work discourse there is an at least implicit recognition that the gig economy offers workers a trade-off between flexibility and security.However, this trade-off is considered valuable precisely because it offers workers the opportunity to experience greater autonomy over their lives: 'to arc our own journey and create our own path' (Mulcahy 2016, p. 1).The unpredictable, uncertain and insecure nature of gig work, is precisely what makes it liberating.The gig economy enables workers to author their own working lives by exercising responsibility for choices, good and bad, that will be of consequence to their lives.When to work, for how long, with which platform each of these decisions matters for gig workers, whilst typical employees merely follow a script set for them by their employer.Unburdened by the patronising and paternalistic constraints of typical employment, the gig worker is free 'to be their own boss'.
By highlighting the consistency between the normative commitments expressed within the progig work discourse, and particular conceptual resources present within contemporary political theory, we are able to categorise the pro-gig discourse as promoting a variant of market freedom; the freedom to navigate the market, and its risks, as an independent economic agent.
However, neither the pro-gig work discourse, nor the idea of freedom in the labour market that it rests upon, are immune to critique.I turn now to explore how an alternative account can help us to reveal the distinctive threats to liberty posed by the gig economy model.

The gig economy and republican freedom
Many gig workers themselves describe the gig economy as far less benign, and liberating, than suggested within pro-gig work discourse.In the gig economy, work may be denied, or discontinued completely, by employers with little notice, reason or recourse to appeal (Knight 2016, McClenahan 2017, Chapman 2021).Employers can adjust their rates of pay unexpectedly, with gig workers often unable to predict how much they will earn in return for their work (Irish Independent 2017, O'Connor 2016, Vaiana 2016).And with fewer legal rights and protections, any financial security for many gig workers is intensely precarious (Hinsliff 2018, Wong 2017, Chapman 2021).As the International Labour Organisation (2021, p. 245) notes, 'Such issues have serious implications for the notion of flexibility, as well as autonomy and control over work on digital labour platforms'.
Critically, it is not just that work in the gig economy continues to expose workers to significant forms of interference.Instead, these accounts highlight the disproportionate vulnerability of gig workers to multiple forms of potential interference, both within and beyond their particular employment relationships, due to the inherent precarity associated with working in the gig economy.Work can be demanded, denied or discontinued completely, without reason or notice.Wages, and incomes, can fluctuate unpredictably.Meanwhile, many of those in the gig economy have few safety nets against financial hardship in the event of sickness or other inability to work.To the extent that gig workers are able to maintain stable work, and a stable income, this rests on insecure foundations that could fall away at any moment.They are reliant on their gig economy employers, and others, who hold the power to intervene unpredictably, at any time or not at all, in a way that is beyond the control of those who are at risk.
The pro-gig work discourse, however, obscures the significance of this precarity.The particular idea of market freedom it deploys does not provide sufficient conceptual resources to identify, describe and categorise the vulnerable status of gig workers, both within and beyond the labour market, as consequential for individual liberty.We cannot, therefore, fully comprehend the consequences of the gig economy for worker freedom without first adopting an alternative conception of freedom in the labour market.

Freedom as non-domination
The republican tradition of political thought provides one promising alternative.As outlined by Philip Pettit (1997Pettit ( , 2012)), the core, orienting idea of this tradition is a conception of freedom, not from interference, but from domination.Domination occurs when (i) an agent (either an individual or corporate agent, such as the state) has, (ii) a 'capacity to interfere' with others, (iii) 'on an arbitrary basis', (iv) 'in certain choices that the other is in a position to make' (Pettit 1997, p. 52).
This challenges the idea that all interference qua interference is inimical to individual liberty.On this view, we need only be concerned with an agent's capacity (regardless of whether this is exercised or unexercised) for arbitrary interference: where one is able to interfere 'at will and with impunity', with no need to justify the interference to, or seek authorisation from, the victim, and where there is no threat of retaliation to this invasion of liberty (Pettit 1996(Pettit , p. 580, 1997(Pettit , p. 22, 2012, pp. 57-8), pp. 57-8).Under such conditions it is impossible for the dominated to enjoy the intersubjective status with others that is necessary to live a free life (Pettit 1997, p. 71); they cannot 'look one another in the eye without reason for fear or deference' (Pettit 2012, p. 47).
However, the republican tradition is far from monolithic.Amongst contemporary scholarship two significant intramural debates concern (i) the compatibility of capitalist employment with freedom as non-domination, and (ii) the conceptualisation of structural domination.Applying republican ideas to the case of gig economy employment helps to navigate, and bring clarity to these debates, whilst simultaneously revealing how the gig economy disproportionately exposes workers to both interpersonal and structural domination.This analysis therefore not only challenges the view that gig work is promotive of individual liberty, it also provides a nuanced account of how the freedom gig workers is undermined, both within and beyond their employment relationships.

Interpersonal domination
The first, interpersonal, dimension of domination relates to the particular power dynamics between gig workers and the particular employers they work for.
Contemporary scholars disagree whether capitalist employment is compatible with republican liberty.Some, such as Elizabeth Anderson (2015), Alex Gourevitch (2015) and Tom O'Shea (2019) suggest that capitalist employment relations always involve some dominating capacity for arbitrary interference.For example, Gourevitch (2015, pp. 111-13) has interpreted the dependence of workers upon capricious and exploitative employers as representing a pernicious form of 'workplace domination'.Indeed, subjection to the arbitrary whim of the employer should be considered an inherent feature of capitalist labour contracts.
Others, however, are more sympathetic to capitalist employment relations, viewing them as entirely compatible with the enjoyment of freedom as non-domination.Pettit (2006, p. 142), for example, has argued that workers' capacity to escape arbitrary interference in their workplace, by moving to employment elsewhere, means that well-ordered capitalist labour markets can enhance, rather than threaten, freedom from domination.This argument aligns with a longer tradition of 'laissez-faire' republicanism (Gourevitch 2015, pp. 43-7), which argues that, so long as workers are able to enter and exit contracts voluntarily, they will never become subject to the dominating will of any particular employer.
Robert S. Taylor (2017, p. 56) has developed this idea further, arguing that in competitive markets the economic power available to particular employers is 'not so much dispersed as extinguished'.This is illustrated, he argues, by the gig economy, where workers are able to 'circumnavigate hierarchically-organized firms' and avoid any 'potential domination within these firms' (Taylor 2017, p. 53).Whilst employers will still have the capacity to exercise some degree of power over workers, this will not represent a form of dominating arbitrary power because workers will have chosen to submit to this power 'from among a menu of workplaces that differ by kind and degree of managerial discretion' (Taylor 2017, p. 58).By making it easier for individuals to manoeuvre between contracts, Taylor suggests, the gig economy model minimises the capacity of any particular employer to dominate their workers.Does this suggest that the pro-gig work discourse could also be grounded upon a defensible republican account of freedom in the labour market?I think not.This is because analysis of actually-existing gig economy conditions suggests that, far from dispersing or extinguishing the power of employers within capitalist labour markets, this model actually helps to concentrate and enhance it.
Indeed, the casualised nature of employment in the gig economy gives firms an extraordinary capacity to interfere with the stability of work, and income, at will and with impunity.Gig workers have few independent means to challenge or resist their employers if they are deactivated from the platforms they rely on for work, or if payment rates are suddenly and unilaterally decreased.This contrasts with the conditions experienced by typical employees who, at least in many jurisdictions, can expect to maintain the guaranteed minimum hours and agreed remuneration outlined in their employment contract, as well as some form of protection from arbitrary dismissal.Increasingly, the capacity for gig economy employers to exercise such discretionary power is enabled and mediated by algorithmic technologies.For example, Uber uses app-based technology to monitor the performance, usage rates and customer feedback of each driver that uses their platform.Using this app, the company is able to communicate directly with drivers, encouraging them to work longer, harder, or more efficiently (Scheiber 2017).The same technology can be used to automatically suspend underperforming drivers from the platform, preventing them from accessing work (O'Connor 2016).This has been described as a form of 'algorithmic domination' (Muldoon and Raekstad 2022), with app-based platforms functioning as a medium that simultaneously facilitates, transmits and obscures the arbitrary and discretionary power inherent to gig economy employment relationships.
Even if a particular gig worker is able, by luck, skill or happenstance, to avoid any actual interferenceby maintaining her desired pattern of work, and a predictable income, over timeshe will nonetheless remain continuously vulnerable to the arbitrary whim of her employer who retains an extraordinary capacity to upset this arrangement at will and with impunity.This capacity for arbitrary interference persists regardless of how flexibly the worker happens to operate within this relationship in practice, and could be easily deployed with little or no notice.Pettit (2012, p. 61) has described this kind of domination-without-interference as 'invigilation', or the intentional monitoring of another with the ability to intervene should they deviate from your desired course of action.This idea is illustrated by the example of a horse that is given free rein by its rider.The horse is not truly free if the rider loosens their grip on the reins only to intervene again should the horse deviate from the path the rider wishes to take (Pettit 2012, pp. 156-7).Where this kind of invigilation is recognised by the agent(s) subject to it, Pettit (2012, p. 61) argues, it is transformed into a form of 'intimidation', encouraging the dominated agent(s) to act with deference or self-censorship in an attempt to dissuade interference.
The freedom of those who are vulnerable to the capacity of others to interfere arbitrarily is therefore compromised even where no actual interference occurs.From this perspective, we can see the inherent myopia of the pro-gig work discourse.The apparent flexibility of the gig economy, with workers 'free' to access work when, where and how they want, appears, from a republican perspective, to remain intensely vulnerable to dominating forms of invigilation.Under the gig economy model, employers enjoy an enhanced capacity to demand, deny or discontinue work with little or no notice, and with little threat of meaningful resistance.Meanwhile, gig workers remain dependent upon the continued good will of their particular employers to maintain their income, as well as access to the platforms where they sell their labour.
This interpretation of republican liberty in the gig economy therefore recognises the extent to which individual freedom can be compromised by virtue of the power dynamics within a particular social relationship.What matters is not just the flexibility to enter and exit voluntary employment relationships, without interference or constraint, but our status within them (Anderson 2017, p. 55).For gig workers, their precarious employment means it is impossible to enjoy a status of intersubjective equality with their employer.Even in the absence of interference, they remain intensely vulnerable to arbitrary power in a way that is incompatible with republican liberty.

Structural domination
A republican approach to thinking about freedom in the gig economy also enables us to identify a second, structural dimension of domination that extends beyond particular employment relationships.
According to Pettit, domination is a strictly interpersonal phenomenon.Whilst he concedes that it is 'usually because of the ways a society is organized culturally, economically or legally, that some people have such power in relation to others that they dominate them' (Pettit 2012, p. 63), social structures themselves cannot represent a source of dominating power in and of themselves (Pettit 1997, p. 52).Structural constraints may reduce the range of options that one can choose from, but they do not subject you to 'an alien will ' (2012, p. 58); to the arbitrary discretion of a dominator.Indeed, dominators must always be a particular, identifiable agent (Pettit 1997, p. 52).
However, several scholars have begun to challenge this interpretation of republican theory, outlining various accounts of structural or systemic domination.Dorothea Gädeke (2020, p. 219), in particular, has emphasised 'the systematic disempowerment that the dominated suffer over and beyond their relation to a particular dominator'.Gädeke describes how informal social norms and practices, such as those associated with racism and sexism, function to position certain agents as more vulnerable than others in society.Domination, in such instances, does not just arise as a result of a person's disempowerment within a particular interpersonal relationship, but as a result of their systematic disempowerment within society as a whole (Gädeke 2020, p. 211).
For example, A woman in [a] sexist society might avoid relationships with men … Yet, even if there is no man in her life who enjoys the actual capacity to interfere with her, she is still confronted with sexist norms and practices that posit her as the object, not the subject, of sexual relations.(Gädeke 2020, p. 210) In this case, informal sexist norms 'pre-structure' every interaction between women and men in a sexist society (Gädeke 2020, p. 211).Women are therefore dominated structurally by virtue of their systemic disempowerment relative to a wide hinterland of 'peripheral' (Gädeke 2020, p. 207) agents who have the power to maintain, and leverage, this asymmetrical power structure.
The systematic disempowerment of certain agents matters, not just because it could facilitate the emergence of interpersonal domination later down the line.It matters because, in and of itself, such forms of systematic disempowerment deny individuals 'the equal status of a normative authority' (Gädeke 2020, p. 211) with others.In sexist societies, women are subject to norms and practices that undermine their social status, that exist beyond their control and cannot be reduced to the arbitrary will of a single, identifiable dominator (Gädeke 2020, pp. 210-11).Crucially, this 'impersonal, systemic form of domination emanates from the daily interactions of countless peripheral agents who do not themselves dominate a particular individual, but reproduce the disempowering norms and practices' (Gädeke 2020, p. 212).
Whilst not seeking to equate the precarity of workers in the gig economy with the disempowerment of women under patriarchy, the case of the gig economy can provide a parallel example of how domination can function in a way that is not reducible to the arbitrary power of a particular, identifiable agent.
Firstly, the precarious nature of gig economy employment can similarly render individuals vulnerable to a wide hinterland of agents beyond the confines of the employment relationship.
For example, whilst consumer-producer relationships are often considered by republicans to be reciprocal and benign (for example, Pettit 2006, pp. 142-3), the gig economy model often implicates customers into firms' disciplinary structures.Indeed, many gig workers are dependent cultivating good customer feedback in order to maintain access to platform-based work.As Alex Wood (2019, p. 3) observes, 'customers, rather than managers, are […] the ones who must be pleased, whose orders must be followed, whose ideas, whims and desires appear to dictate how work is performed'.The structure of the gig economy, and workers' precarious position within it, can therefore transform customers into peripheral agents of domination, who help to maintain the systems of invigilation to which gig workers are subject.
But the structure of the gig economy also creates additional forms of vulnerability and dependency that ripple outwards beyond the immediate sphere of working life, exposing workers to further forms of domination.This may include the vulnerability of gig workers to dependency on so-called 'rogue landlords', who often rent sub-standard accommodation to tenants whose insecure incomes mean they have few options to access any alternative (see Bloodworth 2018).Likewise, gig workers are typically more vulnerable to exploitation by pay-day lenders, as they seek to make ends meet when work is short.Indeed, research by Citizens Advice (2018) has found that, in Britain, those with volatile incomes are five times more likely to turn to high-cost credit services, potentially leading to unsustainable levels of personal debt.
However, what enables these kinds of wider asymmetrical relationships, what 'pre-structures' them, is the precarious system of gig work itself.The inherent uncertainty and insecurity of gig work systematically disempowers gig workers in a way that goes beyond the arbitrary power of particular agents.Their dominated status is, at the structural level, a function of the actions and choices of multiple, anonymous agents who establish and perpetuate a model of employment that fails to guarantee workers a basis of financial stability and security in their lives.
In other words, it is not just that gig workers are exposed to the arbitrary power of their employers, or others; it is that they are already systematically disempowered by virtue of their precarious position within the labour market.This precarity, and the extent to which it disempowers particular individuals or exposes them to the arbitrary power of others, lies beyond their control; and yet it informs an asymmetry of standing and status with others, in the workplace and beyond, that has consequences for their capacity to meaningfully plan their own lives.
To be clear, this particular systematic disempowerment is a result of insecure work in the gig economy, and therefore distinct from the experience of workers who are poorly-paid but nevertheless enjoy secure contracts.Whilst life for individuals working low-income jobs is certainly hard, and whilst there may be independent reasons to condemn forms of work that do not pay workers at least a sufficient living wage, this should be kept distinct from what it means for work to be precarious.If I have a stable, secure position, even if it is poorly paid, I have the capacity to plan my life according to the reasonable expectation that my financial circumstances will not deteriorate dramatically in the short-term due to a sudden change in my hours or the nonrenewal of a temporary contract.As such, I can reasonably plan how to best live within my means.The inherent precarity, uncertainty, and insecurity of gig work, on the other hand, means that the lives of gig workers are perpetually vulnerable to arbitrary interference from others.It is this essential vulnerability of gig workers that encapsulates how our conception of domination should extend beyond analysing 'the power of dominators', and into the wider 'disempowerment of the dominated' that informs their standing in society more broadly (Gädeke 2020, p. 211).Insecure access to work and income, combined with minimal rights and protections, systematically disempowers gig workers relative to others and makes it harder for them to resist or challenge sources of domination that may arise throughout their lives.
Far from representing liberated, autonomous economic agents, freely navigating the risks and opportunities of the gig economy, we can instead see the extent to which gig workers are rendered unfree.In contrast to the view that gig work enables greater autonomy and self-authorship in economic life, this republican analysis suggests that the precarity of such employment means that gig workers have less control over their lives than typical employees.Not only are those working in the gig economy vulnerable to the extraordinary discretionary power of their particular employers the power to demand, deny or discontinue work, and disrupt incomes, at will and with impunitybut their precarious economic and social position renders them systematically vulnerable, potentially, to a wide hinterland of agents that could appear beyond the confines of any particular employment relationship.

The dualisation of antipower
Gig workers are not unique in facing domination within capitalist labour markets.Indeed, as Elizabeth Anderson (2015, p. 65) describes, employment contracts always 'involve a somewhat open-ended agreement to follow orders', granting employers a capacity to arbitrarily dictate any terms of employment not specified explicitly within the contract.Moreover, even employees with the most formally-secure contracts still face the risk of sudden unemployment should their employer arbitrarily decide to scale-back operations or relocate elsewhere (Cicerchia 2022, p. 4).Others, meanwhile, have highlighted the extent to which all workers are structurally dominated under a capitalist system that compels them to sell their labour to survive (Gourevitch 2015).
If this is the case, can we conclude that gig workers are any more or less free than typical employees working elsewhere in the labour markets of advanced capitalist economies?Can freedom for workers only be achieved beyond capitalism (Marx 1975, pp. 296-7), or are there certain varieties of capitalism within which republican liberty is defended?
Republican theorists suggest it is possible to discern the varying severity and intensity of domination in different cases (Pettit 1997, p. 57).In relation to freedom in the labour market, Alexander Bryan (2022, p. 11) has argued that 'the breadth of ways in which agents can be subject to arbitrary power in productive relations … indicates the need to engage with the specifics of an individual case to gauge the severity of the domination involved'.In this respect, while the vivid precarity experienced by many within the gig economy may serve to illuminate and exemplify the kind of arbitrary power to which all employees under capitalism are subjected, it also enables us to distinguish the extent to which gig workers in particular are exposed to specific, and more intense, domination than typical employees who (as a result of greater rights, protections and security in the labour market) often enjoy greater insulation from domination.
Here I draw inspiration from Pettit's 1996 article, Freedom as Antipower.Antipower, 'is what comes into being as the [dominating] power of some over others … is actively reduced and eliminated' (Pettit 1996, p. 588).It consists in the capacity to reliably expect freedom from arbitrary interferencenot through some accident, luck or skillbut through a legally and institutionally constituted ability to counter and repel potential domination.Where antipower is present, the powerful are prevented from interfering arbitrarily, at will or with impunity (Pettit 1996, pp. 588-90).In this respect, the power of the powerful is not supplanted, rather those at risk of potential domination are fortified and empowered in a way that checks, and ultimately disarms, the social and political resources that could enable those in positions of power to dominate others.
Whilst some republican scholars, such as Taylor (2017, pp. 54-5), suggest that competitive markets themselves represent a source of antipower for workers, we have already seen how the hypercompetitive conditions associated with the gig economy fail to neutralise domination.In fact, such precarious labour market conditions can enhance the arbitrary power of employers and expose workers to extraordinary forms of domination.To address this domination, alternative sources of institutionalised antipower must be established.Pettit (1996, pp. 590-2) argues that antipower can be promoted through three kinds of social and political institutions: (i) Protective institutions, including a fair, and nonvoluntaristic, system of law; (ii) Regulatory institutions, including those that curtail the power of employers such as 'regulations against unfair dismissal, the employment of children, and dangerous working conditions'; and (iii) Empowering institutions, including welfare-state institutions such as universal education, medical care and legal aid.
Auditing workers' access to institutionalised antipower offers one way to discern the level of domination they may be subjected to within different economic regimes.Adopting this approach, we can see that gig workers enjoy significantly fewer rights and protections than their counterparts elsewhere in the labour market; reducing their insulation against the arbitrary power of employers and other economically-advantaged agents in society.
The dualisation of employment rights and protections represented by the rise of the gig economy, therefore, can also be understood to represent a dualisation of antipower; with certain segments of the labour market enjoying more access to institutionalised antipower than others.For example, research by Fairwork (2021) has found that many gig workers in the United Kingdom are routinely denied the minimum wage, as well as basic employment rights such as sick pay or legal protection from unfair dismissal.This means that, even in so far as all workers in the UK labour market may be exposed to dominating power, gig workers will have fewer legal or institutional means to repel this domination than typical employees.
Acknowledging this dualisation of antipower within advanced capitalist labour markets allows us to challenge the assertion that the gig economy functions to increase freedom for workers.Instead, we can see how this view obscures the intense domination that many gig workers are exposed to as a result of their status in the labour market.For all the seeming flexibility and choice offered by the gig economy, the associated lack of rights, protection and financial security mean that gig workers are not only exposed to extraordinary forms of arbitrary and discretionary power as a result of their employment conditions, but also have fewer resources that can be used to insulate themselves against this domination.
Crucially, from this perspective, we are also provided with a practical solution to improving freedom for gig workers in the labour market.Rather than continuing to normalise the 'Uberization' of the labour market (Nerinckx 2016), with increasingly precarious and unprotected employment arrangements, we should instead seek to improve individual freedom within (if not beyond) capitalist labour markets by (re)building the legally-and institutionally-constituted antipower available to workers.Sources of antipower could include, though need not be limited to, the extension of legal protections from arbitrary dismissal; minimum wage regulations; statutory paid sick leave, holiday and parental leave; guaranteed minimum hours and/or compensation for cancelled work; as well as trade union recognition and collective bargaining agreements.
Such sources of antipower could help to minimise the arbitrary power available to employers, and other economically-powerful agents in society, whilst simultaneously empowering workers to guard their freedom as non-domination more effectively.The presence of antipower institutions enables those under threat of domination to call upon the collective resources of the state and other shared public institutions to repel and disarm the capacity for the powerful to interfere in the lives of others at will and with impunity.
Far from representing a patronising and paternalistic form of market interference, as theorists such as Tomasi contend, the maintenance of such antipower in society would be entirely consistent with, and even constitutive of, individual liberty.The republican conception of liberty only considers arbitrary interference to represent a threat to individual freedom.Provided interference is non-arbitrarythat it is transparent, applied consistently and forced to track the interests of those subject to it (Pettit 1996(Pettit , p. 590, 1997, p. 65, p. 65)then it will not represent an offence against freedom.Indeed, to the extent that forms of interferencesuch as that associated with the fair rule of lawinsures individuals against domination in society, then this interference will actually promote individual freedom.As Pettit (2002, p. 347) explains, 'as the antibodies in my blood constitute my immunity to certain diseases, the ordinances of nonarbitrary law under which I live constitute my status as a free, undominated citizen'.
Republicans have long held that individual liberty, and the maintenance of a free state, rests on the establishment of 'an empire of laws and not of men' (Harrington 1992, p. 8, Pettit 1997, p. 20).So too the promotion of individual liberty within capitalist labour markets requires an empire of regulation, and other institutionalised sources of antipower, to limit the arbitrary power that employers and other powerful economic actors can exercise over vulnerable workers.
As the rise of the gig economy leaves workers systematically disempowered, and exposed to multidimensional forms of intense domination, this dualisation of the labour market, and of the antipower available to those who work within it, must now be rectified.

Conclusion
In this article, I have demonstrated how existing defences of gig economy employment, whilst grounded in the language of freedom, obscure the significant threats to individual liberty posed by this model.Whilst the pro-gig work discourse emphasises the extent to which this way of organising and governing the labour market can remove constraints on the flexibility to choose when, where and how to sell one's labour, an alternative republican perspective reveals how the precarity of gig work exposes individuals to extraordinary forms of interpersonal and structural domination.
Viewed from this superior republican perspective, the gig economy model not only fails to enhance the freedom of gig workers, it undermines it; enabling intense invigilation by employers, and perpetuating the systematic disempowerment of gig workers relative to typical employees.Indeed, as a result of their insecure economic status, and eroded access to legal rights and protections, gig workers should be considered less free than typical employees within advanced capitalist labour markets.
In constructing this republican critique of the pro-gig work discourse, I have also used the case of gig economy employment to help refine republican political theory: illustrating why republicans ought to be sceptical of de-regulated forms of capitalism that exacerbate the asymmetric power relations between employer and employee, and concerned with the structural forms of domination that are not necessarily reducible to specific interpersonal relationships.
Further research is now required to refine this account of republican political economy, and identify precisely how sufficient levels of antipower could be realised for workers within the contemporary labour market.How can the dualisation of labour rights witnessed over recent decades be addressed, and what kinds of novel regulatory institutions may be required to empower workers against the threat of economic domination?Indeed, this article provides a framework for interrogating not just how antipower institutions can be (re)built for gig workers, but why this is necessary for all workers (waged and unwaged) that face significant structural vulnerability in contemporary economies.
A free labour market is one where workers can enjoy sufficient protection and empowerment against domination, and enjoy an intersubjective status of freedom with others.This is a more demanding vision of liberty than is offered within the pro-gig work discourse.However, it is one that must be increasingly restated as precarious forms of employment, such as gig work, become ever more normalised and widespread.