Self-employment lies at the heart of many debates on the future of work and social protection. These debates, which often focus on the key figure of the micro-entrepreneur operating on collaborative platforms, challenge our assumptions about self-employed statuses in light of the emerging grey areas between wage and self-employment and the growing tendency to combine both statuses. They question the relevance of the criterion of legal subordination, which remains fundamental to the distinction between employees and self-employed workers.

The blurring of statuses represents a direct challenge to the construction of social rights, which differ according to status. The question arises as to the need to improve the least well covered social rights of self-employed workers, especially among those on low incomes. The formal conversion of self-employment statuses into wage employment by jurisdictions settles some of these issues, at least for those who benefit from them. Public measures tend to homogenise the sphere of work by seeking to limit the social costs of changes in status. The recent, albeit limited, extension of unemployment benefits to the self-employed illustrates this trend, as do the incentives designed to promote social responsibility among platform operators. Self-employment thus offers a privileged vantage point from which to examine current transformations in the world of work.