About the Project
About the Project
The Malayang Hanapbuhay Project is part of the Faculty Research Projects under the Sociology of Work research agenda of the UST Faculty of Arts and Letters – Department of Sociology. This project examines the complex conditions of freelance creative workers in the Philippines through a sociological lens, with particular focus on the intersections of freedom, precarity, and digital labor.
The research is grounded on individual undergraduate theses completed under the Sociology program of the University of Santo Tomas. These studies, supervised and coordinated by the project lead, serve as collaborative building blocks for a broader academic inquiry. They also form a significant component of the lead investigator’s ongoing doctoral dissertation in Sociology at the Ateneo de Manila University.
Rooted in both grounded data and critical theory, the project aims to provide a deeper understanding of how Filipino freelancers make sense of “malayang hanapbuhay” — freedom not as a fixed status, but as an everyday negotiation shaped by structural and symbolic constraints.
