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This paper is a unique roundtable discussion between geographers to explore, contextualizeand problematize the role of geography in the gig economy. It brings together eight researchersfrom across Europe all working with qualitative methods and studying the gig economy. Basedon reflections and commentaries regarding the spatialities and temporalities in and of the gigeconomy, we offer an innovative approach to exploring complicated factors in an emerging andrapidly growing field. We highlight the multiple layers of geography in physical and digitalspaces and the, sometimes blurry, interactions between these. We also show howtemporalities shape the geographies of the gig economy. This paper contributes to developing,deepening and advancing theoretical challenges in understanding the gig economy. It alsobrings these challenges into an accessible, yet thorough publication that can be used inteaching about the gig economy and digital geography. We provide a pedagogical tool tosupport university teachers in using this document in their courses., Denna rapport är en unik rundabordsdiskussion mellan geografer för att utforska,kontextualisera och problematisera geografins roll i gigekonomin. Detta samlar åtta forskarefrån olika kontexter i Europa som alla arbetar med kvalitativa metoder och forskar omgigekonomin. Baserat på reflektioner och kommentarer om rumsligheten och temporaliteternai och av gigekonomin erbjuder vi ett innovativt tillvägagångssätt för att undersöka kompliceradefaktorer i ett fält som växer och förändras snabbt. Vi lyfter fram flera aspekter av geografi ifysiska och digitala rum och platser och de, ibland luddiga, interaktionerna mellan dessaaspekter. Vi visar också hur temporaliteter formar gigekonomins geografier. Denna rapportbidrar till att utveckla, fördjupa och främja teoretiska utmaningar för att förstå gigekonomin.Det för också dessa utmaningar till en tillgänglig men ändå grundlig publikation som kananvändas i undervisningen om gigekonomin och digital geografi. Vi inkluderar ett pedagogisktverktyg för att stödja universitetslärare att använda detta dokument i sina kurser., Formas, 2019- 00445, Stockholm University, Fund for Strategic Investments, SU FV-3165-21, FORTE (Research Institute for Health, Working Life & Welfare), 2020-00332, AUFF (Arhus University Research Foundation), AUFF-F-2016-FLS-7-2

This chapter explores how Airbnb hosts approach the labor of operating short-term rental accommodations, a means of earning extra income which has grown rapidly around the world since the platform first launched in 2008. It examines how hosts manage the demands of hosting while balancing this labor with the other duties in their lives such as housework, childcare, and paid employment. We will argue that, for those households that turn to hosting to supplement their regular income sources, strategies to accommodate the added social reproduction labor that is required when taking in guests result in divisions of labor which often mirror historical divisions in terms of location, gender, race, and other social categories. This study draws on over four years of ethnographic work, which was carried out by Maartje Roelofsen over different periods of time between March2015 and December 2020. In-depth semi-structured interviews were carried out with 33 Airbnb hosts living and working in Bulgaria, Denmark, Ghana,and the Netherlands.

We examine the claim that virtual reality (VR) holds significant potential for pedagogical applications in geography. We do so with reference to results from a two-year research-teaching project embedded in a postgraduate course on “Heritage and Its Management.” We reflect on the implementation of a VR field trip to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum enabled by the high-immersive Inside Auschwitz guided documentary, drawing on surveys and interviews held with students after their participation in the field trip. We found that VR technology may work as a (dis)inhibitor and provided users with a sense of social and temporal freedom to explore sites but in combination with a new set of spatial and perceptual constraints. The VR field trip generated curiosity about the “details” of the site, but we argue that learning with and through VR technology only became possible via active bodily adaptations and renewed understandings of bodily capacities and their inequalities. We conclude that VR works most effectively if conceived not as a journey into a self-contained virtual realm but instead as a spatial prompt designed to provoke new questions for students already on the path to developing geographical understandings and imaginations related to specific sites.

Purpose: This paper explores how Airbnb hosts' experiences with and responses to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) health crisis may differ according to their motivations to host and to the type and spatial layout of their Airbnb accommodation. Based on these insights, the paper reflects on the lessons that are learned for the future of short-term rentals. Design/methodology/approach: This is a qualitative multi-method small-scale case study, which relies on in-depth interviews and a focus group discussion carried out with a group of hosts affiliated to the Airbnb Host Community in Aarhus, Denmark. Informed by an interpretivist approach, the study aims to make sense of people's subjective experiences with hosting on the Airbnb platform, and how they have continued and adapted their hospitality practices during the pandemic. Findings: Participants' adaptive practices vary according to their motivations to host and the type of accommodation that they rent out. Although all hosts in this study now implement more intensive cleaning practices, hosts who stay with their guests onsite tend to take stricter preventative measures to avoid contamination and transmission of the virus in their social interactions with guests. On the contrary, hosts who rent out their entire properties and have minimal contact with their guests found themselves less affected by the pandemic's impacts and have had a continued demand for their properties. Social implications: The COVID-19 pandemic has unevenly affected Airbnb hosts. Hosts who share their homes with guests require different adaptations to their daily behaviour and cleaning practices at home than hosts who do not stay with their guests and rent out entire properties. However, unlike professional hosts who largely or solely rely on Airbnb for their income, occasional home-sharing hosts tend to be more flexible in coping with cancelled or fewer bookings. Originality/value: This study provides novel insights into the uneven impac

This article explores how “home” is performed in the emerging sharing economies of tourism, drawing on the example of Airbnb in Sofia, Bulgaria. Based on an (auto)ethnographic approach, this article analyses the sometimes contested ways in which both hosts and guests engage in the everyday embodied practices of home-making. In doing so, it challenges Airbnb’s essentialized idea of home as a site of belonging, “authenticity” or “localness”. It also shows how the political and historical specificities, as well as the materialities of people’s homes significantly shape the ways in which ordinary practices of homemaking play out and consequently affect feelings of (un)homeliness as part of the Airbnb experience. By using performance theory as an analytical framework, this article seeks to contribute to a critical understanding of the contemporary geographies of home in relation to the global sharing economies of tourism, one that is attuned to openness, interrelatedness, and a constant mode of becoming.