Informal Coping Strategies Among Platform Workers: Institutional Voids and Worker Agency in Bulgaria

This paper examines how platform workers in Bulgaria navigate the absence of comprehensive social protection by developing informal coping strategies. Drawing on qualitative survey data from 150 workers across food delivery, ride-hailing, and digital freelancing sectors, the study explores how workers mobilize networks of mutual aid, knowledge-sharing communities, informal financial arrangements, and algorithmic workarounds to mitigate risks generated by precarious platform employment. These practices reflect both continuities with long-standing traditions of informality in the Bulgarian labour market and innovations specific to the challenges of algorithmic management. The analysis situates these strategies within the theoretical framework of institutional voids, emphasizing that workers are not passive recipients of regulatory gaps but active agents constructing parallel systems of resilience. The findings highlight the ambivalent character of informality: while these practices provide immediate security and flexibility, they also reproduce inequalities and risk normalizing precarity. The paper argues that the effectiveness of the EU Platform Work Directive will depend on whether regulation recognizes and builds upon such embedded coping mechanisms rather than displacing them. By foregrounding worker agency, the study contributes to debates on the regulation of platform economies and offers insights into the interaction between formal policy frameworks and informal practices in post-socialist contexts.