Be your own boss!

Sammanfattning: This study seeks to explore how platform labor is rendered invisible and to emphasize the making of class in relation to precarious platform labor in a neoliberal context. Engaging the theoretical frameworks posed by Silvia Federici, Niels van Doorn and Beverley Skeggs, we perform a thematic analysis of three conducted interviews with Wolt couriers, as well as on a debate written by the director of Wolt Denmark, Søren Meier Svendsen, and the Wolt recruiting website likeaboss.nu. Our analysis is centered on the theme’s flexibility, liberation and value. Using a standpoint theoretical approach, we highlight our interviewees experiences as platform workers, to form a critique from their standpoint. We problematize how Wolt as a company draws on different neoliberal narratives on work and the individual worker. These narratives emphasize flexibility as a liberating force and constitute Wolt couriers as their own bosses due to their self-employment. Furthermore, they seek to disconnect from the low status of service work in the on-demand economy, by concealing the precarious structures of the work and constituting the Wolt courier as a powerful subject. We examine how the narratives that Wolt creates differ from our interviewee’s experiences, and ultimately render both the work and class invisible.