UPF Law & Philosophy Logo Philwork Logo Justwork Logo
Doctoral Thesis Defence / Viva Voce

Justice, Autonomy, and Self-Employment

S. Chris Zhang
20 May 2026
Law and Philosophy, UPF

Supervisors

Iñigo GONZÁLEZ-RICOY (University of Barcelona)
Jahel QUERALT (Universitat Pompeu Fabra)

Examiners

Anca GHEAUS (Central European University)
Tom PARR (University of Warwick)
Pablo SCOTTO (University of Barcelona)

The Bifurcation

Two Divergent Realities

Digital Nomad

The Freelance Professional (Opportunity-Driven)

  • Voluntary exit from corporate life — "pulled" by the promise of autonomy.
  • Sets own rates, genuine independence.
  • A vehicle for self-authorship, enabled by capital and skills.
Delivery Rider

The Single Mother (Necessity-Driven)

  • "Pushed" into self-employment as a precarious survival strategy.
  • Bears risks shed by the formal economy.
  • An illusion of independence — disguised subordination.

Key Takeaway: This "bifurcation" reveals self-employment as a deeply fractured social form. The same label describes both genuine independence and disguised subordination — a normative puzzle demanding philosophical attention.

The Puzzle

The Question

How can the self-employed be wronged, particularly when they have chosen their path and lack a specific boss who is responsible for their plight?

The Diagnosis

A Systemic Wrong

The precarity of self-employment is not a personal failing, an acceptable entrepreneurial risk, or a fair trade-off for freedom.

It is a structural injustice, rooted in the deprivation of equal opportunity for meaningful work.

Roadmap Journey
Structure

Roadmap

  • 1. The Invisible Half of the Workforce chs. 1 & 2
  • 2. A New Compass: Meaningful Work chs. 3 & 4
  • 3. Ideals and the "Unsupported Self" ch. 5
  • 4. The Four Asymmetries of Injustice ch. 6
Context

The Invisible Half

~48%
The Self-Employed
52%
Standard Employees

"The Invisible Half"

Exclusion by Omission: Omitted from major works on workplace justice, rendering them theoretically invisible.

Existing Philosophical Focus

Fixation on the employer-employee relationship, failing to mention self-employment at all.

The Label

Why Study
Self-Employment?

"Self-Employment" obscures crucial power dynamics and masks structural vulnerabilities.

1
A Catch-All Category
Treats all solo workers as powerful market actors, regardless of their actual market power.
2
Individualises Risk
Risks treating systemic vulnerabilities as personal preferences or failures.
3
Masks Subordination
The same label covers both genuine independence and disguised dependence.
4
Legal Exclusion
Employment-centric frameworks deny the self-employed equal rights.
Balanced Stones
Methodology

Beyond the Statistics: A Philosophical Lens

  • Approach: Normative Political Philosophy (Non-Ideal Theory).
  • Subject: Solo self-employment.
  • Aim: Evaluate the justice of the working conditions of self-employment, avoiding both romanticisation and pathologisation.
  • Objectives: Conceptual clarification, normative evaluation, and normative prescription.
  • Method: Practical normative reasoning — confronting the normative ideals of self-employment with the empirical realities of today's labour market.
Roadmap Journey
Structure

Roadmap

  • 1. The Invisible Half of the Workforce chs. 1 & 2
  • 2. A New Compass: Meaningful Work chs. 3 & 4
  • 3. Ideals and the "Unsupported Self" ch. 5
  • 4. The Four Asymmetries of Injustice ch. 6
The Shift in Focus

Why Meaningful Work?

Moving beyond traditional metrics of justice to capture the lived reality of solo self-employment.

1
Grounded in Empirics
Research consistently shows that many are drawn to self-employment precisely because they believe it offers a more meaningful working life.
2
Beyond "Decent Work"
Captures the actual content of the activity and its connection to the worker's identity.
3
A Common Aspiration
Meaningful work is shared by employees and the self-employed alike. Yet employees draw on institutional supports; the self-employed face market domination without equivalent protections.
4
A Demand of Justice
Work structures our time, shapes our identities, and mediates our participation in social cooperation. Systematically denying the opportunity to exercise one's faculties deprives workers of the social bases of self-respect.
Framework

Beyond Subjectivism

Meaningful work is more than feeling fulfilled. Pure subjectivism masks exploitation.

A Value-Laden Practice

Meaningful work: Subjective feeling + Objective worth.

Both poles are necessary and mutually reinforcing.

Subjective Objective Meaning
The Construct

Four Dimensions of Meaningful Work

A multidimensional framework:

1. Developmental
Growth, skill cultivation, and the exercise of complex capabilities.
2. Contributive
Producing objective value; connecting effort to a larger project.
3. Relational
Fostering community, social recognition, and mutual respect.
4. Integrative
Resonance with core identity and life narrative.
The Peril

The Ambivalent Promise

Applied to self-employment, hidden perils emerge:

1. Developmental
The burden of constant self-management limits deep skill cultivation and causes burnout.
2. Contributive
Both job creation and idea creation are ambivalent: job creation is far from guaranteed, and innovation depends on access to capital and networks.
3. Relational
Intense market competition and spatial dispersion foster deep isolation.
4. Integrative
Workers are often stigmatised as precarious outcasts rather than celebrated as innovators.
Roadmap Journey
Structure

Roadmap

  • 1. The Invisible Half of the Workforce chs. 1 & 2
  • 2. A New Compass: Meaningful Work chs. 3 & 4
  • 3. Ideals and the "Unsupported Self" ch. 5
  • 4. The Four Asymmetries of Injustice ch. 6
The Promise

The Persistent Appeal

The pursuit of self-employment is underpinned by powerful justificatory ideals.

1
Autonomy
The desire to be answerable to no one and free from arbitrary authority.
2
Individual Commitment
The pursuit of a calling, self-realisation, self-provision, and self-respect.
3
Care
Seeking flexibility to accommodate caregiving and integrate an ethos of care.
The Reality

The Hollow Ideals

However, these ideals often turn against the worker:

1
Autonomy
Dependence on a boss is replaced by dependence on platforms and volatile markets.
2
Individual Commitment
Commitment becomes an affective structure to govern labour and mask systemic neglect. Passion is turned into a tool for managing structural failure.
3
Care
Anxiety over survival corrodes the capacity for genuine care.
A Vital Notion

The "Unsupported Self"

When granted formal legal status of independence, but denied material and relational infrastructure, the meaning of work is distorted.

Meaningful work is not a purely individualistic pursuit, but a relational and institutional achievement.

Roadmap Journey
Structure

Roadmap

  • 1. The Invisible Half of the Workforce chs. 1 & 2
  • 2. A New Compass: Meaningful Work chs. 3 & 4
  • 3. Ideals and the "Unsupported Self" ch. 5
  • 4. The Four Asymmetries of Injustice ch. 6
Structural Injustice

The Four Asymmetries

Systemic flaws that force workers into positions of inferiority:

1. Basic Security
Excluded from the welfare state and lacking a collective voice.
2. Legal & Social Recognition
Denied worker rights and public recognition due to misclassification.
3. Substantive Role
Stuck in outsourced, degraded roles with few opportunities to contribute meaningfully.
4. Long-Term Risk and Opportunity
Trapped in precariousness with endless hours and limited upward mobility.
A TENTATIVE* Proposal

The Dual Guarantee

Securing the "Supported Self" requires two mutually reinforcing pillars.

Together they counter the security gap, correct the recognition deficit, enable refusal of degrading labour, and safeguard against long-term disadvantages.

The Supported Self

The Right to Contest

Robust Collective Capabilities.

The right to organise, bargain, and strike.

The Capacity to Exit

Substantive Material Independence.

A secure income floor to decouple survival from work.

Summary of Contributions

This thesis, Justice, Autonomy, and Self-Employment:

1
Corrects the exclusive focus on the employer-employee relationship and raises the issue of structural injustice in the self-employment context.
2
Provides a framework sensitive to power and precarity to discuss and evaluate solo self-employment.
3
Explains why occupational freedom, when stripped of material and relational support, is not true freedom.
4
Highlights the urgent need for structural solutions for nearly half the global workforce.
Next Steps

Research Agenda

Emerging directly from this thesis, my post-doctoral agenda expands on these themes:

The Inversion of Meaningful Work:
How normative ideals are weaponised as disciplinary mechanisms.
Applied Philosophy (Presented at CEU)

The Fractured Collective:
Collective responsibility in a post-firm economy.
Social Philosophy (Presented at Groningen)

Meaningful Work as Reciprocity:
What duties of contribution do the self-employed owe to society?
Political Philosophy

Is Well Done Enough?:
The normative force of meaningful work beyond mere proficiency.
Business Ethics (Presented at UPF)

Summary of Contributions

This thesis, Justice, Autonomy, and Self-Employment:

1
Corrects the exclusive focus on the employer-employee relationship and raises the issue of structural injustice in the self-employment context.
2
Provides a framework sensitive to power and precarity to discuss and evaluate solo self-employment.
3
Explains why occupational freedom, when stripped of material and relational support, is not true freedom.
4
Highlights the urgent need for structural solutions for nearly half the global workforce.
1 / N