Migrants & Machines: Automation and the Future of Labour Migration
Mit: Paul Roquet, Mira Wallis, Moritz Altenried
In our digital times, policy makers and economists alike have started to speculate about the end of traditional labour migration due to the prospects of remote work and robots replacing migrant workers. The rationality behind these fantasies: Labour, skills and data can move digitally, while migrant bodies are sought to be prevented from crossing borders.
While this scenario still remains a fantasy on a large scale, scholars of digital labour have observed numerous phenomenons of “virtual migration” since the global spread of information and communication technology infrastructures. From call center workers and IT specialists to content moderators and AI microtaskers: Digital platforms already enable capital accessing traveling labour power across the globe in order to serve, extend and augment machines. Meanwhile, costs of social reproduction are further externalized to the worker’s home countries and private households.
The event aims to look at the global movement of workers behind automation technologies and asks how digital technology transforms practices and forms of labour mobility.
Paul Roquet is an associate professor in media studies and Japan studies at the University of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In his talk he will present parts of his latest book The Immersive Enclosure: Virtual Reality in Japan (Columbia, 2022), where he analyses how Japanese telerobotics companies and researchers envision the use of telerobotics for lower-skilled service jobs. They promise Japanese employers to extract physical labour not only from the dwindling number of Japanese citizens, but also remotely from foreign nationals otherwise excluded from the workforce by national borders and immigration law.
Online, via zoom Mehr Informationen und Anmeldung: Mira Wallis (HU Berlin), Moritz Altenried (HU Berlin): moritz.altenried@hu-berlin.de