Graduate Student Receives FAU Graduate Thesis and Dissertation Scholarship

Graduate Student Naim Bin Hasan has been selected to receive the FAU Graduate Thesis and Dissertation Scholarship award. Naim received the award for the following submitted abstract:

The remarkable rise of online freelancing in Bangladesh, with nearly 650,000 workers contributing more than $1 billion annually to the economy, marks it out as a key avenue for digital economic integration in the Global South. This study aims to investigate how Bangladeshi freelancers have availed and negotiated the opportunities and challenges of platform-mediated work on a daily basis, situating them within their experiences of integration into global value chains (GVCs). Based on the World Systems Theory, neoliberalism critique, Labor Process Theory, and Precariat Theory, this research explores the dual character of freelancing: an avenue of economic empowerment through income generation and skill accumulation, and, on the other hand, a site of precarity marked by unstable income, algorithmic control, and lack of social protection. In-depth, semi-structured interviews with 30 freelancers, supplemented with secondary quantitative data, are used in a thematic analysis to highlight freelancers' subjective experiences, mundane practices, and social impacts. Critical questions pertain to financial security, work-life balance, platform regulation, and integration with international markets; freelancers' experiences of these reflect broader globalization and work trends within peripheral economies. This study places workers at the center of debates on digital labor, provides evidence to inform fair labor policies, and helps shed light on Bangladesh's evolving place within the global digital economy.