The Digital-­Based Self-­Employment of Ageing Population: The Dream of One’s Life or Monetization of One’s Network

Abstract

The aging of the working-age population continues. Notwithstanding employers prefer young employees then elder. As result, older people groups are actively pushed out of the labour market. In Russia where population is fast growing too there is the same situation. The people consider alternative labour strategies to survive and help their families, and chose self-employment as one of possible labour strategies. In modern economy there are a lot of new labour capabilities and for elder people are suitable to using digital platforms for one-time work or short-term projects, at the one hand, but at other hand, it leads to hard overworking and self-exploitation. Although people work on such project remotely, they remain included in social interactions and demand in society. The aim of this article is a detailed examination of the motivation older people in transition to digital platform self-employment. The empirical part is based on 15 semi-structured interviews with elder self-employed Russian speakers living in Russia. These interviewees work as taxi drivers, trainers, translators, tutors, copywriters, illustrators and programmers. The author focuses on the grounded theory method. Codes describe the motives and benefits of moving to self-employment. As benefits of platform employment, the author portrays the fully platform-­limited autonomy and flexible working conditions. And also indicates motivation of self-employed for this group, such as monetization of hobby and networks. As result, the author points to advantages of platform-­based self-employment of older people: (1) autonomy as platform-­limited self-management, (2) flexible working conditions (place and working time), and (3) opportunity to monetization hobby and earlier accumulated networks. Moreover, word of mouth helps to monetization networks when such people look for new orders. And networks bring to emotional support and strengthens personal brand.