Social networks and resilience in emerging labor markets

The recent emergence of digital platforms as labor market intermediaries disrupts collective work practices, fostering fragmentation and individualized subcontracting. In these environments where isolation dominates, how do social networks operate, and how do they support social resilience? And how can we, as researchers, apprehend them? To address these questions, this chapter reviews insights from socioeconomic studies of networks, discusses their applicability to platforms, compares and contrasts them to existing evidence on platform work. The analysis confirms that overall, technologyenabled platform intermediation restrains sociability and limits interactions, but specific cases where networking has been possible highlight the fundamental advantages it may have for workers, and suggest directions for future research and policy action.