The workshop focuses on how the world of work and employment is being transformed globally through digitalization. Apart from seeking to apprehend the social contexts of this transformative influence, it would pay special attention to the challenges and tensions brewed by digitalization in the workplace and in employment relations. In view of the above, it would highlight perspectives from Europe and the developing parts of the world in the global South especially Africa.
While internet penetration in the global South may be relatively low when compared to societies in the North, there is no contesting the fact that digitalization and the capacities imbued in it have literally unleashed opportunities and capabilities regarding the labour market in both developed and developing societies.
However, while the impact of technology has been largely salutary, there is no doubting the likely fact that it has also generated some deleterious impacts. These impacts may not only be in the negative sense but also in terms of the clashes between traditions, values, transformational challenges of technologies, the incapacity of regulatory frameworks and concerns with rights and access and patterns of usage of technology.
Therefore, the workshop seeks to capture the ways in which technology or digitalization (of all forms) mediate work and employment realities as well as the challenges and concerns imbued with these. Given the context-specific nature and impact of technology, the workshop would embody perspectives from different world regions especially Africa and Europe as well as comparative approaches to the nature and dynamics of contemporary digitalization as a social process.
Speakers and Topics:
- Delia Badoi (University of Bucharest) – Digital microentrepreneurs and food delivery labour platforms in a comparative reflection in Germany and Romania: Do migration background and algorithmic control really matter for the EU Directive?
- Dennis Redeker (University of Bremen) – Global digital rights
- Prof. Dr. Dmitri van den Bersselaar (University of Leipzig) – First outcomes from research on the employability of university graduates in six African countries
- Edlyne Anugwom (CAIS) – Where the employer is equally precarious: Cybercafe operators and the challenges of bridging the digital divide in Nigeria