LAUSR

This article discusses fraudulent contracting of work in the Polish videogame industry by addressing its relation to workers’ understanding of their insecure employment and the economic risk associated with it. Fraudulent contracting of work is understood as misuse of civil law contracts/self-employment to disguise different types of employment relations. The article draws upon in-depth interviews with Polish videogame workers and key sector organisations to examine their understanding of the prevalence of employment relations not covered by the labour code in the videogame industry. The interviewees presented polarised opinions about engagement with civil law contracts ranging from celebratory approaches to their flexibility to discussing their use by companies in order to circumvent the labour code provisions. This article argues that the understanding of work precarisation needs to be further investigated in relation to national regulatory systems and workers’ understanding of their own employment arrangements.