Independent or Dependent? European Labour Statistics and Their (In)ability to Identify Forms of Dependency in Self-employment

Abstract In the studies on labour market change and transformation of employment relations, growth new forms self-employment, including platform work, has raised a broad debate about how to define, classify, analyse wide range positions within heterogeneous category self-employed workers. This article analyses emergent methodologies used in European comparative statistics identify dependency self-employment. Using 6th wave 2015 Working Condition Survey 2017 ad hoc module self-employment from Labour Force Survey, this discusses representation dependent changes by adopting different operationalization economic operational dependency. Findings show indicators sectors, affecting our understanding working arrangements boundaries between