Welcome to INDL-6
# Digital Labor in the Wake of Pandemic Times
Berlin 9-11 October 2023
Conference program
Three days of presentations panels and events about digital labor
Presentations
Speakers
Sessions
Day 2 | 10/10/23 | |||
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Room | Events Room (ground floor) | Joseph Room (1st floor) | Eliza Room (1st floor) |
Session 4A Labour transformation and data industry (2) Chair: Annarosa Pesole | Session 4B Digital Transformation and the Health Sector Chair: Iraklis Vogiatzis | Session 4C Algorithmic Management Chair: Maria Júlia Tavares Pereira |
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09:00-10:40 | Annika Becker & Marcus Eckelt & Frank Kleemann & Inga Külpmann Voice Messaging: A new method for researching platform work | Maurizio Curtarelli & Emmanuelle Brun The implications of digitalisation for occupational safety and health: a focus on digital platform work | Jorge Martín González Stress at platform work and the role of algorithmic management: Evidence from Spain |
Paola Tubaro & Juana Torres Cierpe & Mariana Fernández & Massi Julieta Longo From the South to the North: Uses and meanings of micro-task work in Argentina | Mirte van Hout & Toon Meelen & Koen Frenken The platformization of mental health care in the Netherlands | Digvijay Singh & Anindya Jayanta Mishra Interactions between Algorithmic Management and Labour Agency in the platform economy |
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Ryan Morgan Fight, flight, or make it work: Exploring workers’ practices navigating tensions between the promise and reality of microwork | Emmanuelle Brun & Maurizio Curtarelli New forms of worker management using Artificial Intelligence and their impact on occupational safety and health: evidence from EU-OSHA research | Sreyan Chatterjee Regulating Algorithmic Mis-Management on Labour Platforms in India - A Case Study on Beauty Service Work | |
Louis Devillaine Data Scientists in the Industrial Context: between Expertise and Micro-tasking | Ioannis Anyfantis & Annick Starren Artificial Intelligence based systems for the automation of tasks and implications for Occupational Safety and Health: evidence from EU-OSHA research | ||
10:40-11:10 | Coffee break | ||
11:10-12:50 | Session 5A Domestic Work Chair: Francisca Gutiérrez | Session 5B The Fairwork Approach towards improving working conditions in the platform economy: methods, results and impact Chair: Bettina Duerr | Session 5C Digital Transformations of Work Chair: Uma Rani |
James Muldoon Matchmakers: Placement Agencies and Digital Platforms in the Carework Market | Patrick Feuerstein & Giulia Varaschin & Tobias Kuttler & Mark Graham & Martin Krzywdzinski The Fairwork Approach to improving working conditions in the global platform economy | Pierre Quesson & Cédric Dalmasso Digital transformation, new forms of workers’ identity changes and emotional consequences: an empirical case study | |
Noé Letourneux Digital Labour Platforms in home care: Impact on formalisation and working conditions | Patrick Feuerstein & Giulia Varaschin & Tobias Kuttler & Mark Graham& Martin Krzywdzinski Summary of results | Katarzyna Cieslik Clifford Geertz Takes an Uber: Navigating Information Asymmetry at the Lagos Mobility Bazaar | |
Nicole Teke-Laurent Analyzing work through home service digital platforms in France in times of pandemic | Patrick Feuerstein & Giulia Varaschin & Tobias Kuttler & Mark Graham& Martin Krzywdzinski Impact of the Fairwork Project on working conditions in the global platform economy | Laura Valle Gontijo Platform work and piece wages | |
Tereza Svobodová & Martin Hájek Status as a performance criterion? Analysis of workers’ reflexive profile-as-status building on carework platforms | |||
Maria Júlia Tavares Pereira Domestic work legislation in Brazil and the rise of platforms: considerations on platform governance and regulation | |||
12:50-14:00 | Lunch break | ||
14:00-15:20 | Session 6A Post-pandemic Labor Aishik Saha | Session 6B Platform Work from the Bottom Up Assia Wirth | Session 6C Brazil's Diverging Paths Chair: Antonio Casilli |
Christoph Borzikowsky & Jens Kowalski & Stephan Raimer New Boarding – a post-pandemic working strategy for bringing employees back to the office | Ámbar Reyes Repurposing Technology for Resistance among Delivery Workers in NYC | Eneida Maria dos Santos Brazilian digital platform drivers: from driving to whatelse? | |
Aditya Ray Between ‘Digital Dis-intermediation’ and ‘Social Re-intermediation’: Labour in India’s Gig Economy during and beyond the COVID-19 Lockdown | Phuong Hoan Le & Vidhi Chaudhri “It is more than just a community”: On the role of collectives and communication in enabling a sense of belonging among gig workers | Marianna Haug & Alexandre De Chiara & Bruna de Vasconcellos Torres The “Brake of the Apps” and its aftermath: The Legalization of Brazilian delivery app workers | |
Vincent Manzerolle Digital Labour and the Limits of the Working Day in the Pandemic Era: Examining the Emergence and Impact of the Right to Disconnect Movement | Bettina Duerr Analytics for the People? Empowering workers to have a say in how algorithmic systems are used in the workplace | Lucas Milanez “Will the platforms leave Brazil?” Discourses of Delivery Workers about Platform Work Regulation | |
Philippine Clot Reconfigurations of employees disconnection practices in relation to the use of digital devices | João Pedro Ferreira Perin Bikeboys and platform work in Brazil: Perspectives beyond formal employment opportunities | ||
15:20-15:30 | Mini-Break | ||
15:30-16:30 | Session 7A Agency and Surveillance Chair: Natália Soprani | Session 7B The Digital Labor and Lifestyle Chair: Jana Pannier | |
Cristiano Lima dos Santos LinkedIn as an expression of the world of work: Meanings of Entrepreneurial Neoliberal Culture in Platform Capitalism | Eugénie Pereira Couttolenc Travel influencers in pandemic times | ||
Srravya Chandhiramowuli, Alex Taylor, Sara Heitlinger & Ding Wang In pursuit of agency: Working within and around data annotation tools | Joanna Bronowicka Organizing in Pandemic Times: Lessons from the Case Study of Yoga Teachers in Berlin | ||
Fabricio Barili Surveillance Platforms at Work: data and workers' control in Time Doctor and Teramind | Tristan Duverné & François Le Yondre Sociological analysis of the co-production of identity and commercial work among "Lifestyle" micro-influencers on the digital platform Instagram | ||
16:30-17:00 | Coffee break | ||
Room | Events Room (ground floor) | ||
17:00-18:00 | Keynote 2 Jack Linchuan Qiu (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, and author of "Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition", University of Illinois Press, 2016) - Labor-Capital Relationships in the Softbank Empire: Lessons Learned Chair: Florian Butollo |
Day 3 | 11/10/23 | |||
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Room | Events Room (ground floor) | ||
9:30-10:30 | Keynote 3 Aida Ponce del Castillo (ETUI, Belgium) Algorithmic management and worker rights: what scenario for what policy option? Chair: Antonio Casilli |
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10:30-11:00 | Coffee break | ||
11:00-12:30 | (Plenary 2) Panel: Lukas Sonnenberg (GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, Germany), Baptiste Delmas (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), Fabian Stephany, Fabian Braesemann (Oxford Internet Institute, UK), "Irresponsible Technologies. Who is accountable for the workers in the AI supply chains?" Chair: Uma Rani (ILO, Switzerland) |
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12:30-13:30 | Lunch Break | ||
Room | Events Room (ground floor) | Joseph Room (1st floor) | Eliza Room (1st floor) |
Session 8A Platform Cooperatives and Alternative models Chair: Paola Tubaro | Session 8B Remote Work Chair: Thomas Le Bonniec | Session 8C Regulations in the Platform economy Chair: Iraklis Vogiatzis |
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13:30-14:50 | Rafael Grohmann Dead Platform Co-Ops: Archiving Worker-Owned Experiences in the Delivery Sector | Céline Teyssier The effects of the remote work on safe and health workplace: A crossborder perspective (France-Spain) | Natália Soprani Valente Muniz Where are the rules in platform work? An analysis of the legal nature of the Americanas Entregas Flash Terms and Conditions |
Tim Christiaens Platform Cooperativism as a Policy | Annarosa Pesole OSH Implications of Surveillance and Monitoring Practices of Remote Workers | Rodrigo Carelli & Donna Kesselman The Digital Economy Regulation Grey Zone: North South Comparison Epistemology | |
Neha Vyas Assessing the potential of alternative platform models in the domestic work sector in India and South Africa | Chiara Belletti & Ulrich Laitenberger Unveiling the Demand for Data Work in the Era of AI: Evidence from a Comprehensive Micro-Task Dataset | Aju John Infrastructures of Claim-Making: Platform Delivery Protests and the Labour Law in Germany and India | |
Julie Renard Hybrid work and collaborative sociabilities | Shantanu Prabhat & Tejaswini Yeleswarupu Implications for India’s policy on gig and platform workers: challenges and way forward | ||
14:50-15:00 | Mini-break | ||
Room | Events Room (ground floor) | ||
15:00-15:30 | Closing session and INDL-7 announcement |
Keynote Speakers
Kylie Jarrett
Creation, commodification, and class in the platform economy: the labour of assetised workers
A striking feature of the platform economy is the diverse range of labour relations it allows that challenge traditional definitions of work, workers, and the mechanisms of exploitation. This paper will explore one set of workers – online creators – to question the concept of commodification as a prism for understanding the economic relations of their work. The labour of influencers, OnlyFans creators, and TikTokers is often critiqued for being a process of commodification of self and thus a site for alienation of meaningful personhood. Drawing on ideas in my new recent book Digital Labour, this talk will question this assumption. It will propose instead the framework of “assetisation” to explain the commercialisation of subjectivity in online creator work. It will go on to explore briefly the implications of this framing for how we understand the class politics at play within the platform economy.
Dr. Kylie Jarrett is Associate Professor in the Department of Media Studies at Maynooth University, Ireland. She is author of the Digital Labor (2022) and Feminism, Labour and Digital Media: The Digital Housewife (2016) and co-author of #NSFW: Sex, Humor and Risk in Social Media (with Susanna Paasonen and Ben Light, 2019) and Google and the Culture of Search (with Ken Hillis and Michael Petit, 2013) as well as a wide range of articles exploring the commercial Web. She is also editor of the new journal Dialogues on Digital Society launching in 2024.
Jack Linchuan Qiu
Labour-Capital Relationship in the SoftBank Empire: Lessons Learned
SoftBank Group, a Japanese conglomerate, operates the world’s largest tech investment fund in the era of AI-powered platform economies. Its impact has been so great that we coin the term “SoftBank Empire” to signify an imperialist model of digital accumulation that has gone global to disrupt the Silicon Valley, although it is still rooted in the historical capitalism and shifting geopolitics of Asia. What are the main components of labour-capital relationship within the SoftBank Empire and its historical predecessors in Japanese keiretsu high-tech conglomerates since the 1930s? What are the key patterns of labour exploitation and resistance, competition and solidarity, and the accelerated rise and fall of digital/high-tech empires in Asia? What lessons can we learn from the case of SoftBank Empire for digital labour struggles, policy responses and debates the world over? This talk will tackle these questions while developing a decolonial and de-imperial approach for the study of platform labour in non-western contexts in the wake of pandemic times.
Dr. Jack Linchuan Qiu is Shaw Foundation Professor in Media Technology at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He has published more than 130 research articles and chapters and 10 books in English and Chinese including Goodbye iSlave: A Manifesto for Digital Abolition (University of Illinois P, 2016), World Factory in the Information Age (Guangxi Normal UP, 2013), Working-Class Network Society (MIT Press, 2009), and co-authored book Mobile Communication and Society (MIT Press, 2005). He is a recipient of the C. Edwin Baker Award for the Advancement of Scholarship on Media, Markets and Democracy, and an elected Fellow of the International Communication Association (ICA).
Aida Ponce Del Castillo
Algorithmic management and worker rights: what scenario for what policy option?
Over the past decades, algorithmic management have transformed how work is supervised and economies are structured, but they bring challenges. Automated decisions are opaque, eroding worker autonomy, reinforcing bias, and creating income uncertainty. Further complicating matters, sensitive and personal data of workers has become a valuable commodity in the digital age, eagerly sought after by commercial interests. We need robust principles and explicit protections to safeguard workers’ data rights, including effective dispute resolution mechanisms. However, the European Union’s approach to these issues remains uncertain. In the EU, four regulatory scenarios exist, from emphasizing data protection and law enforcement to balancing protection, efficiency, and investment. Another approach streamlines regulation, prioritizing profitability. Lastly, harmonized standardization is an option. In light of these varied regulatory possibilities, the central question arises: which scenario offers the most judicious balance when it comes to protecting workers’ data rights in the face of these evolving challenges?
Dr. Aida Ponce Del Castillo is a Senior Researcher at the ETUI (European Trade Union Institute). A lawyer by training, she obtained her European Doctorate in Law, focusing on the regulatory issues of human genetics, from the Universities of Valencia and Bonn. She also holds a Master’s degree in Bioethics. Within ETUI’s Foresight Unit, her research focuses on strategic foresight and on the legal, ethical, social and regulatory issues of emerging technologies. She is a member of the Competent Authorities Sub-Group to regulate nanomaterials at the European Commission. At the OECD she is member of the Working Party ‘Bio, -Nano and Convergent Technologies’ , and AI Governance. Previously, she was the Head of the ETUI Health and Safety Unit, working on occupational health and safety policies in the EU. She also was the Coordinator of the Workers’ Interest Group at the Advisory Committee of Safety and Health to the European Commission.
Plenary Panels
VO (Vehicle Operator)
Documentary Film Screening
VO (Vehicle Operator)
This plenary session offers an immersive experience into the daily lives of workers who train ‘self-driving’ cars through the documentary film “VO” (France, 2020, 19 minutes), directed by Nicolas Gourault. The starting point is a fatal accident involving an autonomous vehicle and a pedestrian, triggering an investigation into the role of human workers in training driverless cars. The voices and words of vehicle operators (VOs) guide us through a nocturnal journey where the landscape blends with the data captured by the car. This unique perspective sheds light on the crucial but often overlooked human aspect of autonomous vehicle development.
Nicolas Gourault is an artist and filmmaker whose diverse education spans contemporary art schools and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales. Rooted in this dual background, his work serves as a bridge between artistic technique and politics, offering a documentary critique of emerging media landscapes. In addition to the short film “VO”, launched in 2020, he has also directed “This Means More” (2019, 22 minutes, about the experiences of Liverpool FC supporters in the aftermath of the tragic 1989 Hillsborough disaster) and “Owning the Weather” (2016, 6 minutes, a reflection on the now-abandoned H.A.A.R.P. research station, funded by the U.S. military, which investigated climate manipulation as a potential weapon). His latest short film, Unknown Label, just released in 2023, investigates further the neo-colonial dynamics at play in training self-driving cars through focusing on the labour-intensive process of image segmentation that is outsourced to online micro-workers from the Global South.
Irresponsible Technologies. Who is accountable for the workers in the AI supply chains?
This panel explores the responsibility dynamics surrounding the production of AI solutions within the intricate supply chains linking tech giants in the global north with subcontractors and digital labor providers in the global south. Notably, two European initiatives have emerged to chart these supply chains and evaluate the due diligence practices of French and German companies. Through a comparative analysis of these two nations, this panel aims to unveil the broader global supply chain landscape. The insights garnered from this examination hold significant implications for both academic research and policymaking, shedding light on the ethical, economic, and regulatory dimensions of AI production in a globalized world.
Dr. Lukas Sonnenberg (GIZ Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit, Germany), Prof. Baptiste Delmas (Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, France), Dr. Fabian Stephany, Dr. Fabian Braesemann (Oxford Internet Institute, UK), Juliette Terrioux, Esq. (Barreau de Paris).
The panel is chaired by Dr. Uma Rani (Senior Economist, ILO, Switzerland).
Day 1