Digital Hoboism

Digital hoboism represents the contemporary manifestation of transient labor in algorithmic economies, characterized by precarious employment, platform-mediated work arrangements, and perpetual mobility across digital and physical spaces. This chapter examines how algorithmic management systems shape the lived experiences of digital workers who operate outside traditional employment structures, including gig workers, digital nomads, freelance platform workers, and remotely employed individuals. Drawing upon critical platform studies, labor economics, and digital sociology, this analysis explores the ideological underpinnings of digital hoboism as both liberation narrative and exploitation mechanism. Through empirical data from platform labor markets, this chapter demonstrates how algorithmic systems create new forms of worker precarity while simultaneously promoting entrepreneurial subjectivities. The research investigates the socio-technical assemblages that govern digital hobos, revealing tensions between flexibility and insecurity, mobility and rootlessness.