Reconsidering digital labour: Bringing tech workers into the debate


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Abstract

jats:titleAbstract</jats:title>jats:pThe digital labour debate has produced manifold insights into new forms of work emerging within digital capitalism. So far, though, most research has focused on highly precarious labourers, neglecting the growing ranks of affluent ‘tech workers’. I argue that this analytical oversight can be attributed to a narrow conceptualisation of digital labour. Thus, this article first proposes a broadening of the digital labour concept to encompass all work entangled with the digital economy. In a second step, I demonstrate the heuristic surplus of this theoretical broadening through a discussion of the empirical literature on tech workers. By bringing tech workers into the debate, I point to the cultural, technological and organisational relations between high and low‐paid digital labourers. Pursuing twin‐aims, the article combines a theoretical reconsideration of digital labour with an analytical discussion of the literature on tech workers to provide a more relational account of work and class in digital capitalism.</jats:p>

Description

Funder: University of Cambridge; Id: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000735


Funder: Foundation of the German Economy

Keywords
class, crowd work, digital capitalism, digital labour, gig work, knowledge work, platform capitalism, professions, tech work
Journal Title
New Technology, Work and Employment
Conference Name
Journal ISSN
0268-1072
1468-005X
Volume Title
Publisher
Wiley