Gig Economy
First International Workshop on the Sharing Economy, Utrecht | "Microentrepreneur or Precariat?"
The sharing or 'gig' economy claims to bring the romance of entrepreneurialism to the masses. In this presentation, based on 30 interviews with workers for Airbnb, Uber, Taskrabbit & Kitchensurfing, I argue that instead of serving as a novel on-ramp to small business ownership, the few workers who identify as entrepreneurs often have significant skills or capital that would also enable them to succeed outside the sharing economy.
Click here or on the video to watch.
My article on this topic, Sharing Economy Workers: Selling, Not Sharing, was recently published in the July 2017 Special Issue of the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society
Gig Economy
In Process | Belong Anywhere? How Airbnb is Dismantling Generations of Civil Rights in the Name of Progress.
Airbnb makes it easier for ordinary people to become hoteliers, transforming their homes into rental spaces, and merging and blurring the divide between public and private accommodations. Through ethnographic interviews with more than 20 New York City Airbnb hosts, I've found that rather than the inclusive, everyone's welcome credo promoted on the Airbnb website, many hosts actively screen their prospective customers, resulting in a throw-back to the pre-Civil Rights era when discrimination and segregation in public accommodation and housing were considered legal. As Airbnb expands, it is effectively reintroducing discrimination into the hotel and housing business.
NY Times
Op/Ed
New York Times Op/Ed | Each Teacher Wonders, Is This the One?
The day after the school shooting near Cleveland (Feb 2012), a student stood in the doorway of my Bronx college classroom and threatened that “something big” was going to go down that week. All I could think of was Cleveland.
The level of trust and openness that’s necessary for teaching disappears every time someone opens fire in a classroom.