From hustle to survival: entrepreneurial speech, class aspiration, and informal labor in Indonesian digital marketplaces

Hasanudin

doi:10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1023

Authors

Hasanudin Universitas Islam Negeri Profesor Kiai Haji Saifuddin Zuhri Purwokerto Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.67490/ijle.v1i3.1023

Keywords:

class aspiration, entrepreneurial speech, informal labor, marketplace discourse, platform visibility

Abstract

Background: Indonesian digital marketplaces have become crucial arenas where informal selling, platform visibility, and class aspiration are linguistically organized through entrepreneurial vocabularies of access, flexibility, and success. Objective: This study examines how public marketplace-related discourse reframes survival-oriented informal labor as entrepreneurial hustle, self-improvement, and upward mobility. Method: Using a qualitative corpus-assisted critical discourse design, this study analyzes 49 public text units from Indonesian marketplace, government, and business-information sources through lexical-framing analysis, risk-obscuration mapping, and platform visibility governance mapping. Results: Findings show that entrepreneurial opportunity discourse dominates the corpus, positioning marketplace participation as access to buyers, expansion, and scalable business possibility. Risk is rarely foregrounded as insecurity; instead, it is reorganized through language of low capital, manageable fees, seller learning, promotion, and flexibility. Platform visibility emerges as a governing mechanism that encourages sellers to become data-responsive, promotional, and continuously adaptable economic subjects. Implication: This study demonstrates that marketplace discourse matters because it makes informal labor socially intelligible as ambition while softening dependence on platform infrastructures. Novelty: This study contributes a discourse-based perspective to Indonesian platform labor research by showing how hustle, survival, and aspiration converge within marketplace language.

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