Good luck.

bogus self-employment.
See link below.
HTH

See Collins re the use of quasi.

In diese Richtung geht die Uebersetzung, glaube ich. Wieder einmal waere mehr Kontext gut, damit man wirklich einen passenden Vorschlag machen kann.

I agree with Darian that neither sham or bogus works very well, but of course the context could affect that too.
I think "pseudo" avoid an impication of illegality while at the same time indicating that this "self employment" is not the real thing.

are used in the US, where you offer your services at a flat or hourly rate to take on specific projects "contracted out" by businesss. You are nominally selfemployed, though your business address more likely than not is your home.

There are a lot of "schein" people here in Germany. I am a Scheinübersetzer by Werner's definition. We also have lots of Scheinasylanten, Scheinheilige, Scheinselbständiger, and Scheintoten. I think "quasi" (there can really be more than one difference according to NODE and the original Latin), "fictitious", and "apparent" might all be quite good.

As Ulrike mentioned, the SPD party, and they oughta know, uses "fictitious" at this site:

http://www.spd.de/english/politics/coalition01.html

"The new Federal Government will take action against the abuse of insignificant employment relationships and fictitious self-employment."

The Swapshop on Compulsory Pension Insurance, somehow connected to the BfA itself, uses the English term "apparent" at this site:

http://www.t-english.com/bfa/meetings.htm

"The discussion of various level of real and apparent self-employment (Scheinselbständigkeit, arbeitnehmer-ähnliche, Selbstständige etc.) which has been in the news over the past year is largely irrelevant to ELT workers."

The rest of the English at both of the above sites is not the best so take it for what it's worth. "insignificant employment relationships", indeed!

Whether or not it can be said that "Scheinselbständigkeit" is not illegal is also a moot point. "Scheinselbständigkeit" certainly contravenes German Sozialversicherungsrecht and the social security authorities may quite easily just decide after the fact, that the worker is/was an employee and then both the employer and his new-found employee will have to pay up the missing social and medical insurance payments. Maybe retroactive over several years. I do not know if penalties or fines may also be assessed, probably not the first time.

The worker writes an invoice and gets paid. If the customer is smart, s/he may try to cover her/his backside with paper and demand a statement from the worker to the customer that the worker is self-employed as well as where the self-employed worker pays her/his taxes and SS contributions. Statements of this type or not, if the SS authorities some how find out that the worker sent most of her/his invoices to one customer, or that s/he had no employees her/himself or did not do anything (for example, advertise or make calls on potential customers) to get more customers or was born after 1948, then both the employer and employee may, have pay up the missing contributions all the way back to the beginning of the working relationship.

"misrepresented" / "deceptive" / "fabricated" / deceitful / "spurious" / "misleading" or "false" "self-employment" might all also be used.

There is nothing wrong with "negative" expressions because almost always either the worker or the customer/employer is deceitfully trying to avoid SS contributions.

HTH

Dan

Darien's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, "pseudo" is very much a legal term.
It is used in many, many contexts.
It means "false," "counterfeit," "pretend,""spurious," and perhaps even "fictitious."
If "pseudo" fits your context, do not be afraid to use it!

Schein could be translated as
false, pretended, illusory, deceptive ...

self-sufficiency = independence, but this way you keep the original words.

Business, personal, emotional ?
This might fit.
HTH