[Publication] Antonio Casilli’s chapter in “Utopies et Travail”

Utopia and Work: When Alternatives Become Possible, a collective volume edited by Mariagrazia Cairo Crocco, Enrico Donaggio, and Nadine Richez-Battesti, was published by Theseo on September 30.

In his chapter, “Utopies concrètes et utopies nécessaires à l’heure des intelligences artificielles” (“Concrete utopias and necessary utopias in the age of artificial intelligence”), Antonio Casilli develops four possible utopias for data work, drawing on forms of resistance and agentivity already emerging among workers.

Despite the harsh working conditions faced by data workers, the intense surveillance to which they are subjected, and the strict prescription of their work through algorithmic management, data workers engage in both individual and collective forms of resistance to platforms.

Workers are resorting to different means of resistance to resist platform exploitation. These include strikes by drivers and delivery workers across Europe, the United States, and Asia, as well as legal action initiated by data workers in Eastern Africa. Through these different forms of action, workers have secured new rights and protections, including the reclassification of employment contract, access to social protections in cases of illness or work related accidents, or even minimal hours payment.

Resistance can also be found in free labour done by platform and social medias users with boycott, consumers strikes and consumers unions.

As platform workers and users increasingly repurpose platform architectures as tools of resistance, a key question emerges: How do workers invent new forms of autonomy and resistance beyond the constraints imposed by platform capitalism?

This chapter builds on one decade of research conducted by Antonio Casilli and DiPLab on data work across the world. It proposes four concrete utopias, possibilities for alternative futures grounded in existing practices of resistance and collective struggle, complemented by two necessary utopias to counterbalance the limitations of the first four.

These four concrete utopias are: (1) unionization, whether through data workers joining existing trade unions or creating their own; (2) platform cooperativism and the development of international alternative networks platforms; (3) legislative regulation and the adoption of rules governing platform work; and (4) accountability on the part of technology companies and platforms, through partnerships with their clients and regulatory bodies.

The first of the two necessaries utopia is a Social digital income : aka the collective distribution of the money created trough users activities on platforms. The goal is to recognize the free labour users are providing to platforms by using them and also to ensure data workers are remunerated correctly

The second is the re-territorialization of digital labour, which involves the collective reappropriation and local governance of digital platforms and infrastructures, with the aim of strengthening workers’ digital sovereignty and their control over the technologies that shape their working conditions.

You can download the book for free here