Spatio–Temporal Unboundedness: A Feature,Not a Bug,of Self-Employment

Abstract

This article considers whether unbounded times and spaces of work are systematically associated with self-employment. In contrast to analyses that frame the spatial and temporal location of work as signifying autonomy or freedom, it posits that self-employment is produced by, and then reproduces, constraints on and preferences about spatio–temporal organization at both occupational and individual level. Using data from 5 years of the U.K. Labour Force Survey (2013-2017), the article takes a novel approach in the quantitative analysis of self-employment by conducting intraoccupational analysis within each of four relatively homogenous occupational groups: hairdressers, shopkeepers, art workers, and accountants. Analysis shows that (a) at population-level self-employment is strongly associated with both spatial and temporal unboundedness; (b) these effects are stronger for women than men; (c) in intraoccupational analyses, gender, alongside other sociodemographic measures, is largely nonsignificant, suggesting that the relationship between these and self-employment is primarily produced by differences associated with occupational segregation; and (d) the association between self-employment and different types of spatio–temporal unboundedness varies markedly by occupation. The article points to the importance of occupation and the spatio–temporal organization of concrete work activity in understanding the reproduction of self-employment. It concludes, therefore, that spatio–temporal unboundedness should be considered as a feature, or structural component, of self-employment, not a choice or by-product.