Abstract

This article discusses the complexity and paradoxes involved in self-entrepreneurship when it is embodied in a collective action, since it combines precariousness, instability and lack of social support with economic gains, social integration, recognition and potencia. To this end, the paper draws on data collected from 13 interviews conducted in a study (2019-2020) with an organized group of self-entrepreneur women based in Porto Alegre (RS, Brazil), the Empreendedoras da Restinga group, and a questionnaire with 30 participants aimed at profile construction, and discursive analysis of the group’s Instagram page. The group’s experience reveals the transformation from a typical selfentrepreneurship model – namely, individual accountability and weakening of collective bonds – to a network marked by sharing and territorial embeddedness. Individualization is appropriated and transformed, creating forms of potencia in managing integration through work