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Reconsidering digital labour: Bringing tech workers into the debate
Dorschel,Robert
Dorschel,Robert
Abstract
The 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.
Description
Funding information University of Cambridge; Foundation of the German Economy
Date
2022
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Keywords
ARCHITECTURE, DIFFERENCE, FRAMEWORK, GENDER, GIG ECONOMY, INFORMATION-SYSTEMS, MIDDLE, PLATFORMS, TIME, WOMEN, class, crowd work, digital capitalism, digital labour, gig work, knowledge work, platform capitalism, professions, tech work
Citation
Dorschel, R 2022, 'Reconsidering digital labour : Bringing tech workers into the debate', New Technology Work and Employment, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 288-307. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12225
License
info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess