Affrontare l’insicurezza lavorativa nel contesto della gig economy: prospettive di indagine per una forza lavoro che invecchia

This chapter provides a structured literature review on job insecurity in the gig economy, with a specific focus on implications for an ageing workforce. Following PRISMA-oriented procedures, a systematic search was conducted in Scopus combining keywords related to gig work, job(ins)security and ageing. The selection resulted in a final corpus of 22 studies published between 2000s and 2024. Two complementary analyses were performed: (i) a descriptive mapping of the corpus (geographic distribution, temporal trends, journal outlets, and research designs), and (ii) a thematic analysis of forms of gig work, meanings and measurement of job insecurity, and age-sensitive evidence. Findings highlight a strongly recent and methodologically mixed literature. The review identifies four partially overlapping gig-economy configurations, i.e., freelance/self-employment, crowdworking, temporary arrangements, and sharingeconomy work, each associated with distinct combinations of autonomy, algorithmic mediation, and exposure to risk. Across studies, job insecurity is treated both as a subjective experience and as a structural condition. Importantly, explicit analyses of job insecurity among older gig workers remain scarce; nonetheless, available evidence suggests that age interacts with welfare institutions, discrimination, and labour-market segmentation, potentially amplifying late-career vulnerability. The chapter concludes by outlining an agenda for future research that integrates age more systematically into models of antecedents, outcomes, and lived experiences of job insecurity, and by highlighting the relevance of inclusive labour and welfare policies in increasingly platform-mediated labour markets.