Posts tagged: digital work

Digital Labour at Economic Margins: African Workers and the Global Information Economy. (Forthcoming Publication)

I have a new publication coming out soon in the Review of African Political Economy, with my colleague Mark Graham. The paper is based on the research we have been carrying out over a number of years in Africa. It deals with the role African digital labour is playing in the global information economy and… Read More »

New Article: Does economic upgrading lead to social upgrading in contact centers? Evidence from South Africa.

Mark Graham and I have just published a new article in the African Geographical Review. The article’s main argument is that economic upgrading in the South African BPO industry can lead to both social upgrading and downgrading among contact centre agents. Anwar, M. A. and Graham, M. (2019) Does economic upgrading lead to social upgrading… Read More »

New article – The Global Gig Economy: Towards a Planetary Labour Market?

Amir Anwar and I have a new article out in First Monday. The piece think through what a planetary labour market entails, how it is relationally, spatially, and discursively constructed, and who it benefits. I’m pasting the abstract and conclusions below. Graham, M., and Anwar, M. A. 2019. The Global Gig Economy: Towards a Planetary… Read More »

CfP for sessions at GCEG: Digital Economies, Digital Connectivity, Digital Margins

The Geonet team will attend next year’s Global Conference of Economic Geography (GCEG) in full strength, running two hopefully lively sessions. Both run under the larger theme “Digital Economies, Digital Connectivity, Digital Margins.” Papers can be submitted between 15 Nov 2017 and 15 March 2018 on the GCEG website (https://www.gceg2018.com).   Digital Economies, Digital Connectivity,… Read More »

New paper: Digital labour and development: impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods

As ever more policy-makers, governments and organisations turn to the gig economy and digital labour as an economic development strategy to bring jobs to places that need them, it becomes important to understand better how this might influence the livelihoods of workers. Drawing on a multi-year study with digital workers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South-east… Read More »

Shaping the new world of work

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 »