Workshop on Digital Labour 2027 | Social Sciences Winter School Pondicherry

Digital Labour as an analytical category emerged across a range of disciplines for insights into the growth of new groups of workers who have primarily responded to the transformation of the labour market through the internet (Scholz 2013). Others have argued for the broadening of the definition of digital labor to map the common features across unpaid user activity, platform-mediated gig work, and formal employment within the digital media industries (Jarrett 2022; Fuchs 2014). Many of the labour management models considered unique to Digital Labour have existed in their inchoate sense in South Asian labour markets.

Despite the ever-expanding size and scale of the platform economy, workers face precarity, informalization, and lack social security. Due to a lack of recognised channels of collective bargaining, workers are collectively resisting, and negotiating with the positions of power, policies and ideologies. Meanwhile, the regulatory framework is evolving, addressing the demands of platform workers. The growing startup culture and local platforms are also challenging the dominance of major platforms like Google, Amazon, and Uber, making South Asia an important site for research on digital labour. Platform apps like those for ride-hailing, food delivery, online shopping, and logistics, use algorithms to mediate work, also referred to as the ‘algorithmic management of work’ (ILO 2021; Wood et al 2019; Woodcock and Graham 2019). This also extends to data work which has deep historical roots in South Asia, particularly through companies operating in the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) or Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) sectors. The network of suppliers, platforms and human workers doing data work also increasingly contributed to what is understood as ‘AI value chains’ (Anwar 2025).

The INDL workshop will focus on the South Asian countries that have historically been a source of low-wage labour, to make the contemporary global digital economy possible in the first place. The purpose of the INDL workshop is to think of possible theorization by critically engaging with the empirical data. We also hope to encourage scholars to interrogate the existing notions of ‘digital labour’ beyond the dominant paradigms mentioned above.

Applicants are encouraged to submit research papers that are methodologically rigorous and theoretically innovative, and addresses issues of gender, caste, class, migration, regional disparity and so on, in the South Asian Context. The topics for submissions include but are not limited to,

• Digital labour, precarity, and gig work 
• Data work, annotation, and AI supply chain  
• Platforms and startup culture 
• Creative labour and creator economies  
• Alternative platform models such as cooperatives 
• Regulating the platforms and policy discourse

We invite PhD candidates ideally in advanced stages of their research and early career scholars to submit an EXTENDED ABSTRACT of approximately 3000 words.

Application Procedure

Please use the following registration form. If you are interested in the Digital Labour Working Group (Working Group 3), please select the option “Working Group 3: Digital Labour”  under “Which working group are you applying to for this Winter School?” while applying.

Important dates

• Deadline for Extended Abstracts: October 01, 2026
• Notification of Accepted Papers: October 15, 2026
• Confirmation from Attendees: October 30, 2026
• Apply for Visa Letter, if need: November 15, 2026 
• Workshop Dates: February 1-5, 2026