Research Contexts and Methods

This chapter describes the research design and the methods adopted, combining statistical, legal, and ethnographic approaches. The statistical analysis assesses how methodologies used in official statistics fail to capture the blurring of boundaries between employment and self-employment. The legal analysis instead shows the continuity between the neo-liberal project underpinning our legal systems and the concepts of ‘working activity’ and ‘undertaking’. Finally, ethnographic research explores the practices of organising among solo self-employed workers’ associations, trade unions, grassroots groups, and freelance cooperatives. The study was first conducted in six European countries – France, Germany, Italy, Slovakia, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom – and then focused on how SSE workers are measured, classified, and represented at the European level.