The research project explores multilingual text work in the platform economy. Success in the workplace requires increasingly more diverse language and textual skills, as the need for knowledge production and expert services has grown, and work is done in multiple locations and across borders using digital platforms. The study focuses on freelance workers in the field of writing and translation who market their expertise through digital labor platforms. In Finland, a majority of freelance workers working through digital labor platforms are under 30 years old, university students or immigrants to Finland looking for a place in the labor market.
The project focuses in particular on multilingual freelancers living in Finland who are trying to get various writing and translation projects through digital labor platforms. Marketing oneself, understanding the platform's operating logic, communicating with clients and carrying out tasks require - and potentially develop - a wide range of multiliteracies. The aim of this research is to explore what text work is like and how language professionals market their language and textual skills and attempt to navigate their employment opportunities in the platform economy. In multilingual writing and translation work, not only multilingual skills are important, but also digital text skills and discursive skills as well as marketing one's own skills and genre knowledge. These competencies and their development will be examined on the basis of ethnographic data. The data will include online profiles of multilingual text workers, interviews, samples of text production and ethnographic observation of their work.
