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The effect of Sweden’s taxi deregulation and platform boom on drivers’ working lives under scrutiny in new book
Sweden’s taxi industry and the consequences of deregulation have become the focus of a new English-language book examining how drivers have dealt with long hours, debt, migration and the arrival of app-based operators including Uber and Bolt.
The Invisible Ones, written by Swedish journalist Klas Vinter, looks at an industry that sits somewhat awkwardly alongside Sweden’s international reputation for strong labour protections and extensive social safeguards.
Rather than approaching the subject solely as an outside investigation, Vinter writes from personal experience. He spent several years working within the taxi industry, using that experience alongside investigative journalism to document the economic and human pressures facing drivers in Stockholm.
The book traces changes that followed Sweden’s deregulation of its taxi market and subsequently the emergence of the platform economy. Its central focus is how financial and operational risks increasingly came to rest with individual drivers, many of whom were required to manage uncertain earnings while continuing to meet vehicle, business and living costs.
Vinter follows his own experiences and those of other drivers through exceptionally long working days, debt and economic insecurity. Migration is another prominent theme, with the book examining an industry in which driving has provided work for people seeking to establish themselves economically while potentially exposing them to precarious working conditions.
The account also looks beyond earnings and working hours. Families, personal ambitions, humour and relationships feature alongside exhaustion and financial pressure, placing the drivers themselves at the centre of a wider examination of how structural changes to a transport market affect the people providing the service.
Britain has faced its own long-running debate over platform work, driver employment status, licensing boundaries, fares and the balance of risk between operators and self-employed drivers.
There are important differences between the British and Swedish regulatory systems, meaning direct comparisons need to be treated carefully. However, the questions raised by Vinter around deregulation, competition, driver supply, platform economics and responsibility for operating costs are also familiar themes within the UK trade.
The Swedish edition of The Invisible Ones received both a Publication Grant and a Library Distribution Grant from the Swedish Arts Council. An English edition has now been published internationally, bringing Vinter’s account of Stockholm’s taxi market to a wider audience.
For taxi and private hire policymakers, operators and driver representatives, the book offers a first-hand account of what can happen when market restructuring and new technology alter the commercial relationship between passengers, intermediaries and the people behind the wheel.
