INFORMAL WORKERS AND THE USE OF NEW DIGITAL TOOLS: RISK FACTOR OR PSYCHOSOCIAL PROTECTION?

Abstract

The growing presence of technology in various sectors of the economy has transformed the way work is performed, impacting both formal and informal workers. Informal workers represent a significant portion of the workforce in many countries. Informal workers, often operating in contexts of greater socioeconomic vulnerability, face structural challenges that include financial instability, a lack of labor rights, and limited access to professional training. In this context, technological advancement can act as both a risk factor and a means of psychosocial protection. This study aims to analyze the effects of digital technology on the lives of informal workers through interviews with professionals working in different segments of the informal sector in Brazil. Using a qualitative approach, we seek to understand how technological tools impact objective and subjective aspects of informal work, based on interviews with 22 informal workers. The qualitative analysis of the interviews with informal workers, conducted using the Content Analysis proposed by Bardin (2011), allowed the construction of five emerging thematic categories. (1) technology as a facilitator of work and entrepreneurship; (2) technology as a factor in work overload and intensification; (3) autonomy and professional identity construction; (4) technological precariousness and professionalization challenges; and (5) reconstruction of trajectories through technology. In this sense, it is possible to affirm that technology operates as a field of possibilities and tensions, where informal workers articulate their material conditions with their subjective aspirations. Although marked by precariousness and limitations, these trajectories reveal creative and resilient forms of existence, in which digitally mediated work is not only a source of income, but also a life and future project. By recognizing themselves as producers, entrepreneurs, and communicators, these Participants construct new ways of being in the world, confronting structural inequalities with agency, imagination, and meaning.