The social capital of creative freelancers. Networking practices in digital and urban spheres

This study explores how freelancers in the creative and cultural industries (CCI) create, utilise and maintain social capital in the context of highly flexibilised, deregulated and digitalised labour markets. CCI freelancers organise their own workplace, working schedule and social security. Regardless of widespread precarity, they commonly perceive their working conditions as an autonomous choice to enjoy the privilege of working creatively. In relational, project-based working environments, their main way to find employment opportunities and reduce risk are social relationships. Their networking practices potentially lead to an intertwinement of private and professional spheres as well as digital and physical connections, and therefore to specific forms of sociality. This project has a qualitative approach, focusing on freelance creatives in Rome, Italy, and Berlin, Germany. Interviews were conducted with 31 creative freelancers living or working in the neighbourhoods of San Lorenzo and Pigneto in Rome as well as Kreuzberg and Neukölln in Berlin. These data were analysed with a grounded theory approach. Additionally, creative freelancers’ urban surroundings, networks and social media content were analysed with a network-ethnographic perspective to networking practices in digital and urban spaces. Findings imply that within the sample, the creation, utilisation and maintenance of social capital constitute continuous tasks throughout the careers of creative freelancers. Berlin’s urban space as a networking environment is more professionalised and adapted to the needs of the “creative class” compared to Rome’s more improvised yet more tight-knit creative scene. The relationship of social capital and the digital sphere appears to be shifting, with social media platforms increasingly serving the purpose of bonding on a more personal level with audiences through curated displays of intimacy. Constant networking as an integral part of the entrepreneurial ethos of creative professions overall leads to a profound blurring of personal and private spheres for creative freelancers.