Cambridge Journal of Economics 2024, 48, 133–150

https://doi.org/10.1093/cje/bead042
Advance Access publication 19 October 2023

‘Digital Tournaments’: the colonisation of

freelancers’ ‘free’ time and unpaid labour
in the online platform economy

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Valeria Pulignano , Stefania Marino , Mathew Johnson , Markieta Domecka
and Me-Linh Riemann*,

This article challenges positive views of the assumed relationships between skills,
productivity and rewards in self-employed digital freelancing. It suggests that the
upfront investments made by freelancers to build up positive platform ratings are
not necessarily recouped in the form of increased autonomy, guaranteed work or
more lucrative ‘gigs’. Drawing on 38 autobiographical narrative interviews and 12
audio working diaries with diverse online freelancers in Europe, we show how the
low barriers to enter platform work provide opportunities for those with limited
work experience and other commitments outside of work. However, the intense
competition between an ever-expanding pool of (both skilled and unskilled) task
freelancers within ‘digital tournaments’ results in the colonisation of worker’s free
time, and the normalisation of unpaid labour. This implies that ‘free time’ for free-
lancers is largely an illusion. Furthermore, the significant ‘sunk costs’ that freelan-
cers make in terms of time, platform-specific skills, reputation and networks are not
fully recovered and cannot be transferred to other platforms.

Key words: Working time, Free time, Freelancers, Digital platforms, Unpaid labour,
Platform work
JEL classifications: I31, J24, J81

1. Introduction
Modern production systems have moved away from the regular rhythms of produc-
tion lines and introduced greater task and schedule flexibility, therefore disrupting
the standard division of working and non-working time (Grimshaw et al., 2002). In
tandem, the decline of vertically integrated production underpinned by hierarchical
internal labour markets have contributed to more fluid or ‘boundary-less careers’
in which individuals move between jobs, organisations and projects in pursuit of

Manuscript received 29 September 2021; final version received 24 May 2023

Address for correspondence: Valeria Pulignano, Faculty of Social Science, Centre for Sociological Research—
KU Leuven, Parkstraat, 45, Leuven 3000, Belgium; email: valeria.pulignano@kuleuven.be
*
KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium (VP); University of Manchester, Manchester, UK (SM, MJ); KU Leuven,
Leuven, Belgium and Roehampton University, London, UK (MD) and KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium and
Europa-Universität Flensburg, Flensburg, Germany (M-LR). This research was developed in the frame-
work of the ResPecTMe European Research Council (ERC) project under the European Union’s Horizon
2020 research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement number 833577) and FWO Flemish Research
Council, Grant/Award Number: G073919N.
© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Cambridge Political Economy Society.
All rights reserved.
134   V. Pulignano et al.
advancement and self-fulfilment rather than moving steadily through firm-specific
job ladders (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). Under this model, individual workers are
more responsible for their own skills and progression (Zimmermann, 2021), and
have few supports to manage social risks from employers or government (Schmid,
2006). The increased risks for individuals are expected to be counterbalanced by in-
creased autonomy in managing the division between work and non-work (Sturges,
2008), with a better expected work-life balance, defined as ‘sufficient control and
autonomy over where, when and how they [individuals] work to enable to fulfil their
responsibilities both inside and outside paid work’ (Visser and Williams, 2006, p. 14,

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italics added).
The growth of project-based working that relies on a diverse and flexible labour
force of consultants, self-employed contractors and freelancers further transfers the
risks for skill development and career progression onto individual workers (Osnowitz
and Henson, 2016). This also gives rise to an ‘autonomy paradox’ (Mazmanian et al.,
2013; Henley, 2021) whereby individuals, attracted by the idea of ‘being their own
boss’ (Hurst and Pugsley, 2011) and ‘time sovereignty’ (Shevchuk et al., 2019), often
experience long and unsocial working hours, which reduces their opportunities to
manage time boundaries (Gallagher, 2008).
Solo self-employment is central to the operation of digital platforms in the form
of location-based app work (such as delivery riding and ride share), ‘crowd work’
micro-tasks (such as data checking), through to professional freelancing such as pro-
gramming, design and translation services (ILO, 2021). Again, the promise of flexi-
bility within online platforms masks the reality of long and unsocial working hours to
comply with erratic and last-minute demands from clients around the world, leading
to a worse work-life balance and emotional exhaustion (Huws, 1996; Lehdonvirta,
2018; Shevchuk et al., 2021). Ratings and reviews by clients, which often reward free-
lancers’ ‘adaptability’ to their requests, are increasingly central to freelancing work
allocation (Maffie, 2020).
While there is research on the impact of technological changes on the blurring
of work and non-work time for ‘crowd-workers’ and ‘click-workers’ who may work
across multiple platforms (Berg and De Stefano, 2018), less investigated are the ‘sunk
costs’ that highly skilled freelancers accumulate while building up their online profile
and reputation within a single platform in the hope of achieving greater autonomy,
more regular work, and more lucrative gigs in the future (Alvarez de la Vega et al.,
2023). Here we distinguish between ‘economic’ sunk costs, such as unpaid labour
and personal investments in training and skills, and ‘social’ sunk costs such as lost free
time, cancelled holidays and damaged relationships. These costs are often not fully
recovered, and any benefits that do accrue to individuals in terms of a positive online
reputation cannot easily be transferred to other platforms (thus compromising the idea
of a boundary-less career).
In order to make sense of these complex dynamics we draw on David Marsden’s
tournament theory (2011) which argues that the shift away from firm-based internal
labour markets, can create multiple ‘ports of entry’ for individual workers, but this also
increases competition for one of the few prized top jobs and means workers may accept
lower wages, intense work schedules and less prestigious projects in anticipation of fu-
ture rewards: 'aspirants may just be dazzled by the prizes, and like gamblers, just keep
on placing more bets in the hope that one day their luck will change, and they will get
that elusive break'. (Marsden, 2011, p. 5)
 Digital tournaments  135
Drawing on 38 autobiographical narrative interviews and 12 audio working diaries,
which covered the activities of online freelancers over a period of 10 working days,
this study explores the dynamics of what we describe as ‘digital tournaments’ within
the professional freelance platform Upwork. We analyse the labour process of online
freelancers (in respect of time, task and performance management) and explore the
competitive dynamics that contribute to the blurring of work and free time (over an
extended period). We show that the upfront investments that freelancers make in terms
of broadening and deepening their skills and experience are rarely recouped, and the
positive ratings that determine work allocation are driven primarily by low fees and

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short response times (rather than the quality of the finished task or project). The low
wages and uncertainty of this slow career track results in further negative spillovers
as freelancers sacrifice more of their free time in order to search for work (Marsden,
2011).
In the next section, we engage with debates in economics and sociology around
changing productions systems and the relationships between work and non-work time,
and discuss those in light of recent developments within digital platforms. We then
present the research design and methodology, before presenting the empirical findings.
Finally, we discuss the findings and offer some conclusions.

2. Theoretical framing
2.1 De-coupling and re-coupling working time and free time
A recurring theme in sociological and economic debates in industrialised and
industrialising countries is the changing relationships between systems of production,
work patterns and leisure time (Rubery and Wilkinson, 1981; Bosch, 2004; Pulignano
and Morgan, 2023). The rapid (but not uncontested) shift to home and remote working
during the Covid-19 pandemic has certainly intensified debates around the blurring
of boundaries between work and leisure time, and between work and home spaces
as workers seek to juggle multiple competing demands on their time (e.g. Pulignano
and Morgan, 2023). From an economic perspective, the key distinction is between
‘productive’ time and ‘unproductive’ time. Productive time is generally paid for by
the employer under the terms of the employment contract whereas unproductive or
‘free’ time, when workers are not at their employer’s disposal, is generally unpaid.
The sharpest distinction between ‘productive’ and ‘unproductive’ time is evident in
piecework systems, where employers pay for units of output rather than units of time
(Rubery and Wilkinson, 1981). This ensures that employers only pay for activities that
contribute to firm productivity, and workers bear the costs and risks associated with
low productivity (e.g. due to a lack of skills, periods of low demand or sickness) (Schor,
1991).
The practice of piecework systems became widespread in pre-industrial Britain in
parts of the textile industry such as clothing production where ‘outwork’ was common
(often undertaken by women and children within the household). However, with the
move towards vertically integrated systems of production and the development of a
standard employment relationship (SER) in the twentieth century, primarily in in-
dustrialised countries (such as the USA and Europe), employers increasingly paid for
units of time rather than output, on the assumption that work and ‘slack’ time within
the working day could not always be separated, and the initial costs of low individual
136   V. Pulignano et al.
productivity would be reclaimed over time as workers undertook training and gained
firm-specific skills (Bosch, 2004). This period saw a greater sharing of social risks
between employers and the state, and the introduction of wage scales linked with se-
niority and ‘time-served’ enabled workers to progress within firms, and in turn they
would train the next generation of apprentices. Ports of entry into internal labour mar-
kets were relatively controlled, and well-defined occupational hierarchies meant that
workers could potentially (but not automatically) move into higher-paid and higher-
status roles within the organisation as their ‘human capital’ expanded (Becker, 1964;
Marsden, 2011). It is clear that in accordance with the ‘human capital’ argument,

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the employment structure of opportunities and any risks that individuals bear while
developing their productive capacity is assumed to be compensated for (in the long
run) by increased wages, social status and work autonomy. In line with this argument
thus the distinction between work (time) and free (life) time was further maintained by
a standard working day and the payment of premium rates for working unsocial hours
and overtime, all of which were hard-won by labour unions through collective bar-
gaining (Cianferoni, 2015). These production and work systems had a ‘positive spill-
over’ effect in that they allowed for an expansion of leisure time and leisure pursuits
among the working and middle classes which in turn underpinned domestic consump-
tion and steady economic growth in many developed economies (Bosch, 2004). At the
same time, the rigidity of the SER arguably reinforces a male breadwinner model by
offering only limited scope for the reconciliation of home and work life. In contrast,
‘non-standard’ work such as part-time, on-call work, temporary, dependent or solo
self-employment offers workers a potential mechanism to reconcile home and work
life. Such forms of work have expanded rapidly since the 1980s in many developed
economies, which in turn partly contributed to the increased participation of women
in the labour force (Rubery, 2015). The trade-off that arises from non-standard work
is that it also typically individualises the risks of non-continuous working and can in-
crease the demands for unpaid labour (Burchell et al., 1999; Rubery, 2015).
Non-standard work also reflects a broader trend of employers shifting risks back to
employees and increasingly, the state. For example, project- and task-based working
can open up ports of entry into formerly closed industries and occupations but can
also remove many of the safety nets that workers historically enjoyed by introducing
flexible work (and time) arrangements (Marsden, 2011). In line with human capital
theory, which posits that the development of individual skills and productive capacity
results in higher job achievement, time sovereignty, autonomy and financial rewards
(e.g. Becker, 1964), workers are assumed to be free to pursue multiple alternative job
opportunities across organisations as part of a ‘portfolio’ career, while building skills
that are valued on the external, rather than the internal, labour market (Arthur and
Rousseau, 1996).
This is particularly true of platforms that rely on large pools of standby labour.
Self-employed task-based workers within platforms face long periods of unpaid time
searching for and waiting for work (Pulignano and Mará, 2021; Pulignano et al., 2023),
potentially building up significant debts as a result (Fleming, 2017). This undermines
work-life balance (Ropponen et al., 2019), with women suffering particularly from the
increased work and life spill-over effects created by flexible schedules (Lott, 2020), and
with negative effects on working time quality and increased stress levels (Eurofound,
2019). Flexible scheduling (through short hours, zero hours and other forms of on-call
work) can intensify feelings of being ‘pressed for time’ (Southerton and Tomlinson,
 Digital tournaments  137
2005) and can mean long periods of unpaid standby time that cannot easily be reallo-
cated to other purposes (Fagan et al., 2014). In this sense, there are negative spillovers
as free time is not ‘free’, rather it is simply unpaid labour (Huws et al., 2016).

2.2 Skill validation and time management within platform work

Within platform work, time management is manifested in and through a three-sided
relationship (Huws et al., 2016) consisting of the platform, the platform worker and the
platform client. This triangular geometry, and the power asymmetries along its various

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axes, are key to understanding algorithmic management within platforms (Vallas and
Schor, 2020). ‘Working time regimes’ are designed to ensure a platform’s efficient and
simultaneously reliable use of an online dependent or solo self-employed workforce
by enacting ‘temporal control’, which combines the issues of flexibility and control of
platform labour (Heiland, 2021). As such, working time regimes become the mech-
anism explicating the distinct type of platform governance, where platforms are seen
as ‘permissive potentates that externalize responsibility and control over economic
transactions while still exercising concentrated power’ (Vallas and Schor, 2020, p. 16).
Algorithmic management has been used to explain how platforms centralise power
while delegating responsibility and risk to the self-employed, particularly those who
rely on platform work as their main source of income (Eurofound, 2018; ILO, 2021).
There is however wide variation in the pay and skill content of freelance work ran-
ging from ‘click-work’ which are often high-volume routine tasks offered through
platforms such as Amazon Mechanical Turk, paying a few cents per task, through to
skilled freelance work undertaken through more specialist platforms (e.g. Jellow) on
typically a project basis (e.g. Pulignano and Mará, 2021; Pulignano and Franke, 2022;
Pulignano et al., 2023). While click work may be highly transactional and cost driven
(with few incentives to build lasting relationships) the low barrier to entry means that
platform work can help supplement other income sources, and workers can ‘hustle’ for
work on multiple platforms (Alvarez de la Vega et al., 2023).
Skilled freelancing however relies more on stronger client relationships and per-
ceptions of reputation and expertise which are generally measured through reviews
and performance ratings. Reviewing is part of the evaluative infrastructure of algo-
rithmic management of platforms (Kornberger et al., 2017), which provides feedback
to workers and signals to prospective clients about the likely quality of the service
offered. Platforms may distribute work among contractors according to user-customer
ratings and may disable or deactivate the accounts of those that fall below an arbitrary
threshold (Sutherland et al., 2020). With this regard, ratings involve a peculiar kind
of ‘cybernetic control’ since they are algorithmically translated into calculating de-
vices that circulate through feedback loops also involving the platform operator (Diab,
2017). Ratings and reviews are supposed to help validate skills in an open digital la-
bour market, and algorithms partly automate the process of matching labour supply
and demand (Wood et al., 2019; Maffie, 2022; Pulignano and Franke, 2022). While
historically, skill validation was undertaken within relatively integrated education and
training regimes (Marsden, 2011), the shift into an international virtual space, such as
that of a platform, renders some qualifications obsolete, and makes skills difficult to
validate ex ante which can distort the matching process.
The issue is that while higher ratings ‘signal’ to clients the likely quality of the
freelancer, the performance algorithms of platforms often rely extensively on quick
138   V. Pulignano et al.
response times and low charge rates. As with click work, platforms have no particular
incentives to control ports of entry into the digital labour pool as each additional
worker costs very little to ‘on-board’ (and is only paid for the work completed), which
increases the chances that paying clients will find a task worker to fulfil their request.
Intense competition ensures low rates for clients and fast response times which in turn
contribute to positive individual ratings and the chances of securing further work.
However, the unpaid labour involved in building up a positive reputation is not neces-
sarily recovered through higher charge rates as workers are only ever ‘as good as their
last job’.

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Hourly charge rates may be relatively transparent on platforms, but the actual fees
paid to workers (based on billable hours and subject to deductions) are often not
shared which means that competing freelancers do not know the true extent of the
‘prizes’ on offer (Marsden, 2011). This means that self-employed freelancers accept
jobs with few details about what will be required (Cedefop, 2020), or jobs that do not
fully utilise their skills, particularly in the early stages of their career where they need to
accrue positive client ratings in order to access more lucrative ‘gigs’ (Ravenelle, 2019).
This may be achieved through quick response times, low-ball bidding and offering
refunds to clients in order to avoid negative ratings (Schor and Fitzmaurice, 2015;
Rosenblat and Stark, 2016; Shapiro, 2020).
Furthermore, the processes of signalling and skill validation within one platform’s
rating system represent significant sunk costs that cannot easily be transferred to other
platforms, and do not necessarily yield higher-paying jobs. In this situation, aspirants
may write off their past investments and focus only on the current task or job offer as
a means to build up their portfolio (the sunk cost fallacy), effectively trapping them
within an extended digital entry tournament (Marsden, 2011). These perverse out-
comes suggest that the individual investments in skill developments as ‘productive
capacity’ (i.e. the human capital) within digital platforms does not lead to increased
time sovereignty, higher wages or increased social status as predicted by supply-side
economic perspectives on self-employment.

3. Background and methods

Our findings are based on a sample of online freelancers in Poland, Italy, Belgium,
France and the Netherlands, who provide services through Upwork. Kässi et al. (2022)
suggest that there are 163 million freelancer profiles registered on digital platforms
globally, with 11% of them having only ever worked through a platform; a stark growth
when compared to 50 million and 10% found in 2015 estimates (see Kuek et al.,
2015). Survey estimates on European crowd-work suggest variations across countries.
Huws et al. (2016) report that 9% of all workers in the Netherlands have carried out
paid work via digital platforms, and Piasna et al. (2022) find that 5.6% of respond-
ents in France and 3.8% in Italy reported doing platform work in the preceding 12
months. This compares with fewer than 2% in Poland (Piasna and Drahokoupil, 2019;
ILO, 2021), Upwork is one of the larger digital platforms for crowd-work, with ‘al-
most 20% year-on-year growth rates in gross freelancer revenues’ (Kässi et al., 2022,
p. 9). Self-employed freelancers are paid per completed task, but they pay a 20% fee
to the platform when the transaction is completed. Freelancers may also purchase
platform currency (‘connects’) in order to increase their chances of winning the tasks.
The work allocation algorithm (performance ratings system) combines data on speed,
 Digital tournaments  139
response rate and task completion, communication, complexity of the job and avail-
ability. Ratings and ‘job success scores’ are visible to clients (based on jobs completed
and cancelled within a rolling 24-month timeframe) and Upwork ranks the profiles
of outstanding freelancers for each occupation who are then ‘suggested’ to clients.
To achieve and maintain positive ratings and to avoid deactivation, freelancers need
to ‘keep active’ by logging in frequently and accepting assignments by the platform.
Freelancers who contact clients outside the platform are sanctioned through warnings,
fines or deactivation.
The study relies on 38 autobiographical narrative interviews (Schütze, 2008), com-

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plemented by 12 audio working diaries, where respondents recorded work activities,
experiences and reflections over a period of ten working days. This technique has been
used to capture the working lives of often isolated platform workers as they navigate
unpredictable work schedules (Alvarez de la Vega et al., 2023). The data collection took
place online during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020/2021. The interviews were con-
ducted in Dutch, French, Italian, Polish and English and participants were rewarded
for their time. All the interviews and diaries were transcribed/translated and accom-
panied by detailed summaries of each interview, including relevant details of context
and personal observation.
In line with the principles of theoretical sampling (Glaser and Strauss, 1967), our
informants differed in terms of their age, gender, nationality, socio-economic and
ethnic background, education, family constellation, stage of their platform career and
area of expertise (i.e. IT work, translation and copyrighting and graphic design; see
Appendix). We sampled participants in two broad groups: ‘newcomers’ and ‘second
jobs’. Newcomers noted that platform work offered opportunities for those who are
young/inexperienced, those lacking formal academic qualifications, migrant workers
with limited native language skills, as well as those who lived a ‘nomadic lifestyle’.
The second group may have had access to employment in the wider labour market
but entered platform work to earn extra money or to reconcile work and home life. By
systematically comparing and contrasting our informants’ different motivations and
experiences of working within a similar platform (i.e. Upwork) we could assess the
similarity and/or differences in the nature of the ‘sunk costs’ associated with platform
labour, including the various forms of unpaid labour, throughout different stages of
their platform careers.
In conducting narrative interviews, we first asked our informants to tell us their
current and past work experiences. Open interviews allowed us to discover new and
complex phenomena, which is in line with the principle of Grounded Theory (Glaser
and Strauss, 1967) we used to theorise. Instead of entering the field with preconceived
hypotheses and assumptions, we sought a deeper understanding through autobio-
graphical narrative interviews of our informants’ work experiences, such as how they
came to be online freelancers, what skills and resources they had acquired previously,
how their initial expectations differed from the lived reality of platform labour, as well
as how they evaluated their current ways of making a living. Although we were keen
to understand the competitive dynamics of digital tournaments, the open ‘narrative’
interview format allowed our informants to go into details not only about their work
experiences, but also about the biographical and social costs they associate with the
obscuring of temporal boundaries in their everyday life, while providing a longitudinal
and processual perspective (Schütze, 2008; Neale, 2021), that is, how work experi-
ences had been changing over time. The audio work diaries allowed us to collect rich,
140   V. Pulignano et al.
detailed and contextualised accounts of the working day (Crozier and Cassell, 2016).
They also allowed real-time activity capture (Whiting et al., 2018) and examples of
blurred work-life boundaries plus meticulous accounts of how many hours were spent
doing paid and unpaid tasks.
In case of the narrative interviews, we were looking for a deeper understanding of
work experiences and the meaning-making practices of interviewees, thus we applied
the socio-linguistically informed analysis of social and autobiographical processes
(Schütze, 2008). In case of audio diaries, we were looking for patterns of action, and
thus we used thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Data analysis proceeded in

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three sequential steps: (i) open coding of interviews and diaries, (ii) selective coding of
interviews and diaries and (iii) comparative analysis of both data sources, moving from
codes through themes to concepts. Following these sequential steps, we progressed
from first-order codes (such as ‘work time’, ‘pay’, ‘extra costs’, ‘freedom to decide
when to work’, etc.), to second-order themes (‘freedom’, ‘flexibility’, ‘autonomy’, ‘paid
and unpaid work’) and to concepts essential for our analysis, such as ‘work-life bound-
aries’, ‘unpaid labour’, ‘investment strategies’ and ‘sunk costs’.

4. Findings
We present the findings in three sections that capture: (i) the entry of freelancers into
platform work; (ii) the various ‘sunk costs’ associated with platform labour as freelan-
cers attempt to build their ratings and reputation; and (iii) the competitive dynamics
of ‘digital tournaments’ within skilled platform work.

4.1 Entering platform work

For experienced platform workers, a key motivation was to liberate themselves from
the increased competition in the liberalised market of services (e.g. translators) or
dysfunctional, rigid and ‘toxic’ working environments where they often were discrim-
inated against and undervalued (due to their ethnicity, nationality and gender). This
group was particularly attracted to the platforms’ promises of being able to ‘control
when, where, and how you work’ (cf. Upwork website, 2021).1 In this group there are
also those who wanted more autonomy and flexibility in order to deal with family
responsibilities, as in case of Ian, a 43-year-old translator working on Upwork in the
Netherlands:
I needed flexibility and I didn’t mind having to work on the weekends or in the evenings. With
my girlfriend we have a little baby and I needed to plan out a little bit, figure things out. (…) I
guess I wanted to be my own boss, so I wouldn’t really have a boss that orders me to do things.

For others, wishing to enter the professional field for the first time and experiencing
very limited job opportunities, platform work seemed to be the only viable option, as
in case of Viola, 25-year-old translator living in a small town in Italy:
I live in a small isolated town, in the middle of nowhere. (…) And then the pandemic started
and I was thinking: ‘What can I do? Let’s see if I can find an online job, to work flexibly from
my computer’. The thing that seemed most feasible was translation as I could use my lan-
guage skills I’d got when I’d stayed for a year in England. I knew at the beginning I might be
paid close to nothing but I had no choice.

1
https://www.upwork.com/en-gb/hire/landing/, accessed 25 April 2021.
 Digital tournaments  141
When first joining the platforms, freelancers from both groups lacked knowledge of
what is necessary to succeed in this new work environment. Our informants soon
found out that on labour platforms, skills are primarily recognised through positive
client reviews rather than formal qualifications, experience level, job descriptions and
career ladders. This was particularly the case for those freelancers without stable em-
ployment in the wider market, and whose income largely depended on the platform.
Yet, freelancers who could rely on another source of income soon become aware of the
rules of the platform they had to comply with to undertake platform tasks. Irrespective
of their previous work experiences, all freelancers need to invest in their platform-

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specific reputation by ensuring that their clients are always satisfied.
Clients are generally less interested in applicants’ academic credentials and previous
experience than they are in their platform-specific reputation which is based on other
clients’ ratings, quick response rates and low fees. However, without any ratings, both
experienced freelancers and newcomers found it extremely difficult to attract pro-
spective clients and stressed how getting five-star reviews was a first crucial milestone
to get their workflow started. Freelancers reported frequently accepting unpaid assign-
ments, or at a nominal fee, for the sake of getting their first positive ratings. Unpaid
labour was particularly disruptive for those just starting out but those with stable jobs
in the regular labour markets also reported undertaking unpaid tasks:
The way the platform works, you basically start by being a blank page. You have no rating, no
status, so you have no choice but to work. I know I’ll sound awful, but I had no choice but to
work with India, which was a tough game. (…) I mean, they offer the lowest rates, but actually
expect you to work hard. And so, I translated 50 pages for 50 euros. [Barbara, experienced
translator, 36 years old, Poland]

Our informants experienced this initial phase as frustrating but necessary to establish
their platform-specific reputation. However, while some participants moved through
this phase comparatively quickly, others spent many months on the platform without
receiving more regular or more lucrative assignments. There was no difference among
participants reporting whether they spend more or less time before getting a job on the
platform, the only variety being that those with a source of income could afford to wait
longer on the platform.

4.2 Investing in a platform-specific reputation

Our data revealed that large parts of our informants’ working days are unpaid, as they
spend several hours doing tasks which account for the completion of their job, that is,
browsing for opportunities, writing applications, contacting clients, without knowing
whether they will recoup these costs when getting paid by clients. Upwork determines
the rates for freelancers through an algorithmic control system that obscures the re-
lationship between clients and workers by introducing ratings as the way in which to
assess the performance of a worker, and therefore the possibility a freelance has to set a
rate. Freelancers often spent time responding to generic ‘enquiries’ that rarely resulted
in commissions and were not typically costed into charge rates as ‘overheads’. This is
not limited to newcomers, as Anita, an established platform freelancer, explained:
Also today I did the things that I’ll never be paid for, in the sense that I will hardly recu-
perate all this from what I’ll be able to price in my rates and therefore eventually earn. In the
morning I was doing research about my new assignment. I was looking for the key words, I
142   V. Pulignano et al.
was checking the websites of the competitors, and so on. It took me about an hour and it’s for
the assignment I’m still to be offered.

The charge rates were further eroded by the fees paid to platforms, for currency con-
version, bank and Paypal services, as well as micro-pay for micro-tasking, as reported
in the diary of an Italian established translator, Jessica: ‘74.72 dollars for today. But if we
take off fees and exchange rate I’ve earnt around 60 euros’.
Paulo, a 38-year-old Portuguese man living in France and working as an IT devel-
oper, explained how his work is fragmented into various paid and unpaid activities.
Despite his fourteen years’ experience, he still only earned €70 for a full workday and

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spent a significant portion of his day working ‘for himself’, as he put it, whilst foregoing
payment. The economic costs are also created by the platform itself by pushing free-
lancers to purchase platform currency (Connects) to increase their chances of win-
ning assignments, as reported in the interviews by Marlies, a 22-year-old translator in
Belgium:
They’re turning it more and more into some sort of milking cow. So, if you want to respond
to a job, you have to pay for the chance of earning money [by buying Connects], after which
you have to pay if you want a deposit on your own bank account.

These sunk costs cannot be easily covered by freelancers’ rates and give no guar-
antee for paid work as reported by Willem, a 30-year-old IT specialist working in the
Netherlands:
You pay for a lot of stuff on Upwork. You buy Connects, so put in my prices higher and there
was one person interested in my work but he said: “Yeah you’re good, but you’re too expen-
sive.” He didn’t give me the job.

Beside the investment of time and effort, there was also another type of investment
needed: in skills, office equipment, hardware and software, which was deemed by plat-
form freelancers as necessary to work properly and stay competitive. These investments
were not covered by their charge rates, as reported by Paulo in his working diary:

I spent all of my working time sitting, so I had to invest in a good chair and good office ma-
terials. Also, for this new assignment, I was not entirely skilled for some things, so they sug-
gested I do a course on Udemy. So, this is an online course which I can take in my own time.
I thought the course was worth the investment. So, I paid for the course, I didn’t discuss this
with the client and so this is something I’m doing for myself and I could use for other clients,
potentially. So, I am not tracking the time which I spend studying for this client.

Event after investing in office equipment and skills upgrading, Paulo charges his cli-
ents the same rates as before as he ‘always feels the pressure to please his clients and
make them come back’. Paulo is also aware how punishing the platform can be as ‘one
bad feedback, just one, it’s enough to ruin your profile’ and lower the chances for paid
work.
Developing one’s skills on a digital platform posed a particular paradox for novice
platform freelancers with limited experience. James, a 28-year-old Ghanaian man in
the Netherlands, was a self-taught IT specialist working on Upwork. Given the import-
ance of ratings, there was very little room for ‘beginners’ mistakes and James cycled
between periods of training (up to 10 hours per day at his own expense) and working
on the platform. While further training should have improved his marketable skills, he
found that taking time off to study meant his response rate had gone down and his
 Digital tournaments  143
profile had become less visible to clients, thus reducing the amount of work. To be-
come active again, he had to effectively start from ‘scratch’ to build up his profile by
taking on small jobs that rarely covered his costs. James’ narrative pointed to loneliness
and an anomic quality of his work environment: nobody had taken notice of his time
and financial investments in skills development, as clients continued to select platform
freelancers mainly on the basis of their platform-specific reputation. In trying to build
a platform-specific reputation, which potentially could help them to increase their
earnings, freelancers become trapped in the loop of constant investment: improving
their services, trying to make their clients satisfied and observing how their time is in-

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creasingly colonised by platform work.

4.3 Colonisation of ‘free’ time

To improve their platform-specific reputation our informants felt pressure to always be
‘on call’ in order to respond to prospective clients even during unsocial hours. Being
aware that platform reputation is extremely volatile (being ‘top-rated’ one week does
not imply maintaining the status over the following weeks), freelancers could not af-
ford any breaks. Platform work, therefore, colonised their free (life) time, which had
to do with (i) the fear of bad reviews, (ii) a lack of regulations in terms of working
hours, (iii) working for clients in different time zones and (iv) a fear of missing out on
new opportunities. These factors had a significant impact on their experience of time
in everyday life as illustrated by the story of Lorenza, a 20-year-old university student
from Italy, who had joined Upwork in the hope of finding work as a translator. This
endeavour turned out to be very difficult, as she got continuously rejected due to her
lack of ratings. Like Barbara, she adjusted her strategy by accepting extremely low-paid
assignments from developing countries. This however caused a significant disruption
in her daily rhythm:
Some clients don’t even live where I live so there is a jetlag, so maybe I get a message at 2
am, (…) there’s really no boundary maybe for them it’s like a 1 pm [and] for me it’s 8 pm. So
I’m supposed to be off work and study, but then I get a message so there is really no…/eh/ no
balance between work and private life (…) I also fear that they would leave me a bad review,
(…). So I try to do my best to be always available, and not so expensive, and to do everything
as they like, I like to be precise and to deliver the work if I can ahead of time and at a good
price, so that maybe they notice and they give me better review. But it’s not always the case.

The technology enabling constant contact combined with the expectation to be always
‘on call’ make it impossible for platform freelancers to clearly distinguish between
work and non-work (life) time. Platform freelancers work ‘whenever possible’ and ‘at
whatever rate’ to meet clients’ expectations and to improve their rating scores. The
working diaries draw a clear picture of the economic costs in the form of time pressure,
under- and un-paid tasks experienced by freelancers, who are often required to work at
high speed in order to meet very tight deadlines as reported by Anita:
I had only four hours to finish a translation today. I felt frustrated because I had so little time.
I think I was hitting the keyboard with more intensity.

Both the narrative interviews and working diaries show how the economic costs which
platform work entails is interwoven to social costs. For example, participants reported
working early mornings, evenings, nights and weekends, admitting that maybe on a
Saturday or Sunday, they ‘take it more easy’ (Jessica) but still have little time for their
144   V. Pulignano et al.
families or for social and leisure activities. In working diaries freelancers declare to be
‘fully autonomous’ while reporting unpaid assignments and that the boundaries be-
tween work time and non-work time are increasingly blurred, as in case of Diana, a
33-year-old Belgian translator and copywriter who works for a translation agency as
well as through Upwork:
I promised my client to deliver the work by tomorrow, not realizing that it was already Friday
night. But of course I also deliver in the weekend if necessary. (…) Sometimes I have no time
to see my boyfriend or my friends, but I need to keep my top-rated status, which implies I
often have to give up on what I can price in my rates to clients, I need 5 stars, always.

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Biographical narratives included reflections about whether freelancing was worth the
significant social and economic costs it implies. Making oneself perpetually available
to clients incurred significant social costs, including the deterioration of social relation-
ships, the negligence of caring responsibilities and/or having to give up important per-
sonal interests and meaningful activities, as reported by Nina, who was candid about
the encroachment of platform work into her private life:
My boyfriend also thinks I’m a workaholic, because even on a trip, I take my laptop with
me and I need to have a hotspot to stay online. We go out with friends to get a pizza or see a
movie, and I can’t take my eyes off my phone, I’m waiting for an email, I want to reply right
away. (…) As my friend once called it, I’m always on stand-by. For me, there’s no line between
work and free time, or to be more accurate, between looking for work and free time.

Freelancers who are uncertain about their platform position (as ‘top rated’ status is
not guaranteed) and on whether and when a next assignment will come along, tend to
accept all jobs, irrespective if they have realistic time frames or not. Thus, they often
struggle to meet the deadlines, working 12 hours per day or longer, sacrificing their
family life and all other aspects of their private life, as in the case of Jan, a 43-year-old
translator in the Netherlands:
Sometimes I say I’m going to deliver 10,000 words of a certain technical text within 2 days,
then I know up front it is not possible. So then indeed you exert a lot of pressure on your-
self. Sometimes there are also assignments that are not realistic, but I still accept them. Even
though I know I’ll get in trouble with them. But once you have an assignment, you work 9 to
9. And I accept it knowing I had to communicate it at home.

These workers remained trapped in the whirl of jobs coming without any regularity,
making the boundaries between their work time and private time impossible to main-
tain. The sanctions for not meeting a deadline or lowering one’s response rate are
severe, as negative client reviews result in a lower platform reputation, in which free-
lancers had invested into so heavily. The fear of even greater ‘sunk costs’ keeps freelan-
cers attached to the platform, trapped in the constant race for jobs, reviews and scores
which does not necessarily yield any prizes.

5. Discussion
Through a case study analysis of the online task work platform Upwork in Europe, this
article has explored the competitive dynamics of digital platform work and revealed
the pervasive challenges that freelancers face in balancing their expectations of au-
tonomy and earning a decent living, set against the detrimental impact on their work-
life balance and the burden of unpaid labour. Below, we discuss three theoretical and
 Digital tournaments  145
empirical contributions to our understanding of the problems related to the distinction
between work and non-work (‘free’) time and unpaid labour for freelancers providing
services through digital platforms.
The first contribution concerns the theoretical implications of platforms for under-
standing the significance of ‘free’ time for freelancers. While previous literature has
documented the insecurity faced by online task workers (Pulignano and Franke, 2022;
Wood and Lehdonvirta, 2022), and the specific difficulties they have in exercising
‘time sovereignty’ (Gallagher, 2008; Shevchuk et al., 2019), our research shows how a
digital piece-rate system requires even skilled and experienced freelancers to invest sig-

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nificant unpaid time searching for jobs, responding to client requests and attempting
to improve their online ratings. Thus ‘the shadow of work is projected on to free time’
(Supiot, 2001, p. 81).
Regardless of workers’ background and routes into platform work, we also see
that the time spent building an online reputation (anchored to client reviews) may
increase the volume, but not necessarily the value, of work on offer. Moreover, the
non-transferability of ratings increases the sunk costs of freelancers in specific plat-
forms and weakens the prospect of both sideways and vertical moves within a portfolio
career (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Marsden, 2011). This surprising finding for both
categories of freelancers (newcomers and second jobs) can be explained by the plat-
form algorithm that emphasises low fees, high acceptance rates and fast response rates
over and above verifiable skills or the quality of work completed.
Our second contribution is to draw some analytical implications from these find-
ings to the literature on self-employment, time sovereignty and the platform economy.
Fundamentally we question the extent to which ‘being your own boss’ is possible within
the platform economy as our findings point to the clear ‘colonisation’ of freelancers’
work time, personal (free) time and, one could argue, their personal lives by the plat-
form. While the exploitative nature of online platforms operations has been considered
in several analyses (e.g. Wood et al., 2019; Joyce, 2020), we further reveal the way in
which platform algorithms that determine work allocation signal to clients the propen-
sity of the freelancer to ‘overwork and undercharge’. While skills (and skill validation)
remain an important predictor of which type of platform workers engage with (Kost
et al., 2020), client reviews derived largely from quick response times and low charge
rates shape the job opportunities available to freelancers within platforms regardless
of their underlying abilities and experience (Griesbach et al., 2019). Platform freelan-
cers experience significant difficulties in separating work and non-work (‘free’) time as
much of the unpaid labour they routinely undertake is not formally recognised as ‘pro-
ductive time’. We echo the concerns of Supiot that by classifying working time simply
as ‘the period during which the worker must be working and therefore at the disposal
of the employer’ (2001, p. 64) risks leaving the door open to misinterpretations con-
cerning what ‘free-time’ or ‘non-working time’ should be.
We also apply Marsden’s concept of extended entry tournaments to the context of
skilled freelancers who rely on one main platform for most of their income (as distinct
from remote click-workers who may work across multiple jobs and platforms). These
‘digital tournaments’ further reveal the contradictions that arise from the shift to more
flexible project-based work regimes where the opportunities to enter are abundant, but
intense competition means that progress into the higher-status positions (i.e. the top-
rated platform workers) is by no means guaranteed. This has important implications
for skills development as well as workers’ autonomy and empowerment. Compared
146   V. Pulignano et al.
with a traditional employer which selects and recruit its employees and shares the costs
and risks of training, the online platform is an open space where the allocation process
is ‘dehumanised’ and ‘decentralised’ by the use of technology and automation (Veen
et al., 2019). This process relies on a large volume of freelancers being responsive to
client requests in the quickest, most flexible and cheapest way, by amplifying ‘reputa-
tion’ or ‘attractiveness’ over the verifiable skill of the freelancer.
Our findings also show how freelancers who seek to invest in skills and qualifica-
tions outside of the platform might paradoxically be penalised by the platform for the
(even temporary) non-response to job offers, thereby returning them back to the start

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of the ‘extended entry tournament’. Algorithmic rating mechanisms not only free the
platform from any responsibility to validate skills, but also ensure a steady stream of
job listings and willing freelancers competing for gigs, from which the platforms derive
their own income. Thus, the time and resources saved by the platform, are dispropor-
tionally paid by the platform freelancers who need to comply with the most demanding
users’ requests and learn to signal their skills online by receiving good reviewers and
performance ratings from clients. This often includes a process of trial and error, for
instance doing lots of small jobs, responding quickly to all offers and trying to improve
the hidden client feedback that freelancers do not normally see (Sutherland et al.,
2020).
Our third contribution is to explore freelancers experience and understanding of
work and free time. Importantly, we shed light on how platform freelancers frequently
report a lack of control over long ‘standby’ periods during which work might be offered,
which invariably spills over into non-work (‘free’) time. We argue that the process of
continually ‘proving’ ones-self, that is, characteristic of platform freelancing, is essential
to maintain a regular flow of work, but it can mean the loss of freedom to decide when
to work and not to work, and which work to accept or refuse, with important impli-
cations for work-life balance. Furthermore, the non-transferability of ratings between
platforms, and between on-platform and off-platform work, means that these are ‘sunk
investments’ in a single platform that do not necessarily improve a freelancer’s career
options in the external labour market. Detaching work from the worker in all forms
is difficult, especially under the emergence of new digital technology which fails to
account for unpaid work by blurring the temporal boundaries between work time and
non-work time (or ‘free’ time).

6. Conclusions
This article has provided theoretical and empirical evidence that challenges posi-
tive views of the assumed relationships between skills, productivity and rewards in
self-employed digital freelancing. On the contrary, we show how through lowering bar-
riers to entry, platforms provide opportunities for those with limited work experience
and other commitments outside of work. However, the intense competition between
an ever-expanding pool of (both skilled and unskilled) task freelancers within ‘digital
tournaments’ results in the colonisation of worker’s free time, and the normalisation
of unpaid labour. This implies that non-work (‘free’) time for freelancers consists of
time which is not spent freely. Based upon the empirical evidence we claim that further
exploration of ‘digital tournaments’ as a theoretical construct within platform work
would extend critical understanding of how and the extent to which workers’ free time
is jeopardised on platforms. Although our theorisation of ‘digital tournaments’ may be
 Digital tournaments  147
limited to only one platform (Upwork), future research could investigate other plat-
forms and other national contexts.
Our study has important policy implications. In Europe, the recent European
Commission’s strategy has taken the concrete form of a Directive on Platform
Work, launched in December 2021, which protects minimum standards for platform
workers. Also, the European Commission launched a Communication in September
2022, adopting guidelines on the application of Union competition law to collective
agreements regarding the working conditions of solo self-employed persons. Our find-
ings suggest that supporting freelancers in regaining power over their earnings is cru-

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cial to the de-colonisation of free time within a market which is largely self-regulated
by platforms. This requires states to coordinate measures that reduce the competi-
tive pressures on freelancers across, for example, different regions where conditions
may be different. Measure may also be needed to prevent platforms charging fees for
freelancers.

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Appendix: Interviewees overview
No. Name Age Gender Occupation Country Interview Diary
1. Claire 35 F Translation/copyrighter Belgium 1
2. Laura 32 1
3. Diana 33 1 1
4. Mathieu 32 M IT Belgium 1
5. Marlies 22 F Translation/copyrighter 1
6. Sigrid 26 1

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7. Marc 27 M Translation/copyrighter France 1
8. Paulo 38 M IT 1 1
9. Bel 40 F Translation/copyrighter 1 1
10. Namita 29 F 1 1
11. Olivier 38 M 1
12. Timothy 24 M 1
13. Deepa 27 F IT 1
14. Mirko 40 M Translation/copyrighter Italy 1 1
15. Marco 38 M IT 1
16. Jessica 26 F Translation/copyrighter 1 1
17. Danilo 37 M IT 1
18. Ludovica 26 F Translation/copyrighter 1
19. Viola 25 F 1 1
20. Zuzka 27 M IT 1
21. Jan 43 Translation/copyrighter Netherlands 1
22. Marie 20 F 1
23. Willem 30 M IT 1
24. Sander 31 1
25. Mila 32 F Translation/copyrighter 1
26. Sasha 28 1
27. Camila 37 F IT 1
28. James 28 M 1
29. Jamie 25 1 1
30. Lorenza 20 F Translation/copyrighter 1 1
31. Chris 26 M IT
32. Krystof 26 Poland 1
33. Matylda 38 F Translation/copyrighter 1
34. Anita 30 1 1
35. Barbara 36 1 1
36. Marika 31 1
37. Hanna 51 1 1
38. Nina 27 Graphic Design 1
Source: Own elaboration.