|
10-12 Sep 2025 Bologna (Italy)
|
|
|
|
|
INDL-8 Call For Papers "Contesting Digital Labor: Resistance, counteruses, and new directions for research" The International Digital Labor Network (INDL) is pleased to announce its eighth annual conference, which will be held at the University of Bologna, Italy, on September 10-12, 2025. INDL conferences provide a unique opportunity to share knowledge and new perspectives in research and practice related to digital labor. Broadly understood, the scope of this concept encompasses unpaid work on social media, paid work mediated by digital platforms (both location-based and online), formal employment in technology industries, and even traditional occupations that have undergone processes of digitization, platformization, and intensive use of big data and artificial intelligence. Each year, the organizers of the conference propose an overarching theme on which to particularly encourage submissions, as a way to reflect the rich diversity of views on this multifaceted object, to consolidate existing knowledge, and to highlight new ways forward.
The theme of this year, "Contesting digital labor," builds on the observation that the recent rise of digital labor parallels an unprecedented surge of forms of individual and collective resistance in multiple geographies and settings. The strikes of delivery riders in Latin America, the unionization of content moderators in Africa, the organization of data workers and social media influencers in Europe, accompany emerging and more informal initiatives of mutualism and solidarity as well as everyday acts of individual resistance. Digital labor is becoming a key site of contestation for the future of work and of technological development.
The conference aims to explore a fundamental contradiction of digital labor. On the one hand, algorithms and digital technologies shape a new labor regime characterized by data extraction, widespread surveillance, and strict control on workers, which result in the fragmentation, individualization and casualization of jobs. On the other hand, digital labor also brings about an unexpected resurgence of labor conflicts. Most protests have been worker-led or initiated by grassroots organizations, while traditional trade unions have taken a leading role in some cases. Informal, sometimes individual actions of resistance have become increasingly common, in addition to formal, collective mobilizations. Some interventions have involved counteruses of digital means in the workplace, for example through the creation of apps, tools, and software with the explicit aim of enabling workers to understand and reformulate their working conditions. In this perspective, digital affordances are open to interpretations, uses and practices that not only escape platforms’ surveillance but also establish social relationships other than those of labor exploitation, thereby undermining the efficacy of platforms’ power. This evidence suggests that digital platforms may not have an exclusive power to shape the digital age, and that workers, individually and collectively, can radically transform the trajectories of technological development.
Uncovering the richness of collective and individual contestation practices that are emerging at the core of platform capitalism is essential to grasp the recent transformations of labor and the broader tendencies that are reshaping the digital age. This means looking at workers’ struggles not only as an object of research, but also as a crucial moment in which new knowledge is produced. Contestations reveal the reasons of workers’ grievances, grounded in their daily experiences, identities, skills, and aspirations. They bring to light aspects of labor organization and power asymmetries that would otherwise remain invisible, thereby potentially challenging the narratives of platforms. They allow comparing and contrasting the viewpoints of workers to those of intermediaries and clients, bringing more voices into the debate. Valuing this knowledge is a key goal of INDL-8 and an essential step to understand the current challenges and future perspectives of digital labor.
This conference seeks to examine how platform workers navigate, challenge, and reshape algorithmic management systems while forging innovative forms of solidarity and collective action. It also aims to reflect on the perspectives that technological developments open for workers in order to escape everyday surveillance, to resist top-down control and to organize to defend their rights.
For this purpose, this year's INDL-8 conference invites submissions along four "Current topics" that explore these issues:
Four more "Legacy topics" have been introduced, focusing on subjects that previously garnered substantial interest from conference presenters:
We also welcome submissions for a "Starting Topics" series, focusing on three emerging and currently under-researched areas that have the potential to drive meaningful progress in the field:
We invite contributions from both confirmed and more junior academic researchers (also including PhD students), and from all professionals involved in the study of these themes, also including labor organizers and other practitioners. All disciplines involved in the study of labor and/or technology are welcome, for example economics, management, political science, law, sociology, psychology, history, geography, science & technology (STS) studies, media studies, design, and computer science.
Submission Guidelines: To submit, please visit the Submission tab of this website.
Abstracts should:
Please remember to specify:
Abstract submission deadline: April 27, 2025 Notification of acceptance: June 4, 2025
This edition of the INDL-8 conference is organized through a collaborative partnership between the University of Bologna, Fondazione Di Vittorio, and the International Labor Organization (ILO).
Information regarding the following will be published soon on the conference website:
|
| Online user: 2 | Privacy | Accessibility |
|
