Dirty by design? Gig work challenges, stigma, and identity threat in crowdwork

This study examines gig work through a dirty work and occupational stigma lens to explore how crowdworkers experience and navigate identity threats arising from structurally challenging working conditions. Empirically, we draw on a two-wave longitudinal survey of 567 European Crowdworkers, of whom 278 provided valid data at both waves. Using latent change modeling, we demonstrate that intra-individual increases in experienced work-related challenges predict heightened perceptions of occupational stigma and subsequent identity threat. Contrary to prevailing views that prestige buffers stigma, our results show a context-specific reversal of prestige’s expected buffering role: increases in perceived prestige strengthened, rather than weakened, the association between rising gig work challenges and occupational stigma. Our findings conceptualize crowdwork as a structurally invisible form of dirty work by highlighting how structurally precarious conditions shape the internalization of stigma, leading to identity threat.