The Dynamics of Creative Workers’ Precarity, Occupational Identity and Employment Status

: Insights from the Case of Freelance Writers in South Korea

Abstract

The creative industry has been characterized by the informalized labor market where short-term project-by-project employment is predominant and few formal labor regulations exist. It is widely acknowledged in the literature that creative workers tend to favor informal governance of work over stable employment and labor protection in the name of work autonomy and self-realization. Critical scholars have shown that informal nature of creative work and workers’ preference for the informality mutually reinforce one another, reproducing the profound work precarity in creative industry. In this context of create work, this article explores how creative workers make sense of and experience the shift in their employment status from a freelancer to a full-time, regular worker. Drawing on in-depth interviews with broadcasting writers at a public broadcaster in South Korea who are given an opportunity to make transitions from freelance contracts to fix-term and to standard employment contracts, this article attempts to theorize the dynamics between work precarity, occupational identity and employment arrangement. We illustrate how writers’ understanding of different types of employment arrangement evolves over time, as they negotiate work precarity, working style and social relations in the context of occupational identity.