Jorien Oprins’s research while affiliated with University of Amsterdam and other places

As the demand for online freelance labour is on the rise, it is critical to have a thorough understanding of the implications for freelancers. This article contributes to this understanding by synthesizing the empirical, academic literature centering the narratives of freelancers working through online freelance platforms. In doing so, it aims to answer the question of what is known about how these freelancers experience and navigate their work. The analysis identifies four prevailing themes, that is: (1) employment opportunities and motivating factors; (2) challenges; (3) freelancer agency; and (4) livelihood outcomes, and uncovers that online freelance labour results in an uneven distribution of livelihood outcomes. It also shows that detailed knowledge on this distribution is lacking. To fill this gap, this article proposes an agenda for future research based on Heeks’ (2022) model of adverse digital incorporation and revolving around four dimensions: design inequality, resource inequality, institutional inequality, and relational inequality.

Digital labour platforms have become increasingly common for the trade of a range of digitally transferable services. To help participants mitigate the uncertainty that is inherent to trading on digital platforms, feedback mechanisms have become the main tool to gauge the 'performed' quality and reliability of platform participants. Based on an analysis of 750 written feedback texts, this article first examines which freelancer qualities (technical skills, generic skills or personal competences) matter most to clients and, therefore, are instrumental to the building of a freelancer's digital reputation on a platform and, second, how exactly these feedback texts help reduce uncertainty when trading via a platform. Herewith, this paper adds to a deeper understanding of the 'rules of the game' on digital labour platforms.

Online freelancing and impact sourcing have in recent years emerged as new models for offshore service delivery. Both have the potential of spreading the gains of online service work. Based on empirical research in the Philippines, this article examines how both models integrate outlying areas and more marginalized workers in international networks of online service delivery. The different models of information and communication technologies (ICT)‐enabled service delivery were observed to rely on the same pool of labor, thereby limiting the broader distribution of its gains. The article concludes that ICT4D research can benefit from an inclusive development lens when examining the beneficiaries and users of new (information) technologies and their longer‐term prospects for income generation.

Investigations of what increasing digital connectivity and the digitalization of the economy mean for people and places at the world's economic margins. Within the last decade, more than one billion people became new Internet users. Once, digital connectivity was confined to economically prosperous parts of the world; now Internet users make up a majority of the world's population. In this book, contributors from a range of disciplines and locations investigate the impact of increased digital connectivity on people and places at the world's economic margins. Does the advent of a digitalized economy mean that those in economic peripheries can transcend spatial, organizational, social, and political constraints—or do digital tools and techniques tend to reinforce existing inequalities? The contributors present a diverse set of case studies, reporting on digitalization in countries ranging from Chile to Kenya to the Philippines, and develop a broad range of theoretical positions. They consider, among other things, data-driven disintermediation, women's economic empowerment and gendered power relations, digital humanitarianism and philanthropic capitalism, the spread of innovation hubs, and two cases of the reversal of core and periphery in digital innovation. ContributorsNiels Beerepoot, Ryan Burns, Jenna Burrell, Julie Yujie Chen, Peter Dannenberg, Uwe Deichmann, Jonathan Donner, Christopher Foster, Mark Graham, Nicolas Friederici, Hernan Galperin, Catrihel Greppi, Anita Gurumurthy, Isis Hjorth, Lilly Irani, Molly Jackman, Calestous Juma, Dorothea Kleine, Madlen Krone, Vili Lehdonvirta, Chris Locke, Silvia Masiero, Hannah McCarrick,Deepak K. Mishra, Bitange Ndemo, Jorien Oprins, Elisa Oreglia, Stefan Ouma, Robert Pepper, Jack Linchuan Qiu, Julian Stenmanns, Tim Unwin, Julia Verne, Timothy Waema

Impact sourcing is de verzamelnaam voor initiatieven die gericht zijn op het rekruteren en trainen van gemarginaliseerde groepen voor ICT-gerelateerd werk. Dit artikel analyseert de trends in impact sourcing en de potentie voor bredere introductie. Onderzoek naar bestaande initiatieven in de Filipijnen toont de spanning tussen commerciële belangen en maatschappelijke doelstellingen bij impact sourcing.