New forms of digital work have emerged which, in theory, can be done from anywhere. Does this mean that geography no longer matters to digital work? Not exactly. My new chapter with Amir Anwar draws on our empirical research into digital labor to outline how geography still matters, and who it matters for in a… Read More »
This report is based on a three-year investigation conducted by researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) at the University of Oxford and the Gordon Institute of Business Science (GIBS) at the University of Pretoria. Online gig work is becoming increasingly important to workers living in low- and middle-income countries. Our multi-year and multi-method research… Read More »
This is a short post about the research that I lead into digital work and the digital economy in Sub-Saharan Africa. The work that I do (in tandem with my Geonet colleagues) specifically looks at the growth of digital gig economy and the business process outsourcing activities in four African countries namely South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria… Read More »
The European Trade Union Institute has just put together a 40-page report that comes out of their conference on ‘Shaping the new world of work. The impacts of digitalisation and robotisation’, held from 27-29 June 2016 in Brussels. I spoke in the Plenary on ‘technology’, and spoke about both fears for digital workers, and potential… Read More »
Digitalization and the increasing connectivity across the globe have capacitated the emergence of an online labour market. A number of platforms now facilitate transactions between employers and employees, often based in very separate locations. These platforms cater for a variety of job types, ranging from simple tasks to complex projects and services and are estimated to provide employment to tens… Read More »
Call for Papers: Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting. April 5-9, 2017, Boston, MA The proposed Digital Geographies Working Group of the RGS/IBG and the proposed Digital Geographies Specialty Group of the AAG would like to invite submissions to a series of paper sessions and panels for the 2017 meeting of the American Association of… Read More »
A short video interview that I did about digital labour markets at the ETUI conference on ‘Shaping the New World of Work’.
For decades, large firms have been outsourcing and offshoring jobs. Work flowed from developed economies to developing ones, where wages were lower and regulations were of a lighter touch. Europeans and North Americans lost jobs, and Asians, South Americans, and Africans gained them. But the nature of these processes meant that business activities had to… Read More »
The Digital Transformations of Work Conference that Alex Wood and I organised brought together a room full of brilliant and passionate speakers and 80 guests to have a wide-ranging and critical conversation about what digital transformations mean for the future of work (and workers). Sadly, the room could only accommodate 80 and we had a huge… Read More »
As part of the Green Templeton College Future of Work Programme we are bringing together leading researchers to consider the ways in which digitalisation and the internet are globally transforming work, employment and labour markets. This one-day conference features: Professor Saskia Sassen (Columbia University) and Professor Linda McDowell (University of Oxford) on digital work and exploitation;… Read More »