The European Trade Union Institute (ETUI) hosted the conference “Future of Work” in Brussels on February 10-11, 2026, bringing together researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to examine how contemporary transformations are reshaping the world of work. Among the contributions was a presentation by DiPLab’s Paola Tubaro, who offered crucial insights into the relationship between artificial intelligence and job quality. Tubaro’s presentation centered on a forthcoming chapter titled “What is AI doing to Job Quality? Platformization, Fissured Workplaces and Dispersion,” co-authored with Antonio Casilli. This work will appear in the new edited volume Job Quality in a Turbulent Era, edited by Janine Leschke and Agnieszka Piasna and published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd. The chapter’s key intervention challenges a common assumption in discussions about AI and work: that technology alone determines outcomes for workers. As Tubaro emphasized during her presentation, AI does not operate in a vacuum. Instead, its impacts on job quality emerge from the broader political economy and organizational contexts in which these technologies are introduced and deployed. The chapter explores three interconnected phenomena transforming contemporary work: * Platformization: The expansion of platform-based work arrangements that mediate labor through digital technologies, creating new forms of employment relationships and power dynamics. * Fissured Workplaces: The fragmentation of traditional employment structures, where work is increasingly outsourced, subcontracted, or restructured in ways that distance workers from the organizations that benefit from their labor. * Dispersion: The geographic and organizational scattering of work processes, enabled by digital technologies but shaped by strategic choices about how to organize production and manage labor. The conference featured a preview of the new book on job quality, with editors Leschke and Piasna exploring how AI, digitalisation, and decarbonisation are reshaping work organization and affecting core components of job quality—not through technological inevitability, but through deliberate choices made by organizations and policymakers. Dr. Funda Ustek Spilda complemented these discussions with concrete insights on datafication and surveillance practices at companies like Sama and Amazon UK, demonstrating how these dynamics transform work on the ground. Dr. Massimo Mensi, serving as discussant, reinforced a crucial theme: governance choices matter more than the technology itself. He also challenged the common framing of training as a cost, arguing instead that it should be understood as an investment in workers and work quality. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We are pleased to announce that DiPLab’s co-director, Professor Antonio Casilli, contributed expert testimony to the International High-Level Expert Committee on Democracy at Work for the Spanish Government, whose final report will be publicly released tomorrow, Monday, February 2, 2026, at 11am CET in Madrid. ABOUT THE REPORT Established by the Ministry of Labour of the Government of Spain, the Expert Committee on Democracy at Work brought together international experts to examine critical challenges facing workers in the contemporary economy. The Committee’s comprehensive report represents months of research, deliberation, and expert testimony from leading scholars and practitioners worldwide. Professor Casilli’s testimony, delivered at online hearings in May 2025, focused on “The Crisis of Informality and the Global Value Chain,” bringing DiPLab’s groundbreaking research on data work and AI labor into this crucial policy conversation. In his testimony, Professor Casilli presented findings from DiPLab’s extensive research programme on Digital Platform Labor, highlighting a frequently overlooked dimension of algorithmic management: the externalized, largely invisible labor that powers artificial intelligence development. Professor Casilli’s complete testimony to the Committee is available below: Hearing_Casilli_Democracy_Work_Spain_May_2025Download The presentation examined data work as an essential but systematically undervalued component of AI production systems. Drawing on DiPLab’s field research across multiple continents—including French- and English-speaking countries in Africa (Madagascar, Kenya, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Uganda, Egypt), Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries in Latin America (Venezuela, Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina), and South and Southeast Asia (India, Philippines, Bangladesh, Nepal, China)—Professor Casilli documented stark disparities in compensation and working conditions. As Professor Casilli emphasized, while AI appears to be “produced” in the Global North where major technology companies maintain their headquarters, this masks a complex reality: data production remains concentrated in the Global South, with labor flowing through established patterns that reflect linguistic, colonial, and economic connections. REPORT RELEASE When: Monday, February 2, 2026, at 11:00 AM CET Where: Ministry of Labour, Madrid (live-streamed) Live stream: https://www.youtube.com/live/frTjUx2TOb8 The complete report will be published in both English and Spanish at noon CET on the dedicated website: * English: https://reportondemocracyatwork.org/en/home/ * Spanish: https://reportondemocracyatwork.org/es/home/

DiPLab is proud to announce the publication of our latest research report: Data Work in Egypt: Who Are the Workers Behind Artificial Intelligence? This new study, led by Dr. Myriam Raymond with Lucy Neveux, Prof. Antonio A. Casilli, and Dr. Paola Tubaro, provides the first comprehensive examination of Egyptian data workers training AI systems for tech giants worldwide. How to cite this report: > Myriam Raymond, Lucy Neveux, Antonio A. Casilli, Paola Tubaro (2025). “Data > Work in Egypt. Who are the Workers Behind Artificial Intelligence”. DiPLab > Report. <https://hal.science/hal-05417930> > > Tweet Rapport DiPLab Egypte-DefcDownload KEY FINDINGS AT A GLANCE Our survey of over 600 Egyptian platform workers reveals a troubling reality: * Three-quarters depend on platform income to pay their bills * Average monthly earnings: $58.76 (less than half Egypt’s minimum wage of $147) * Hourly rate: $1.22 (compared to global average of $4.43 in 2018) * 76% identify as men, 74% are between 18-34 years old * 60% hold bachelor’s degrees in science or technical fields * 83% work on platforms out of financial necessity Both male and female data workers tend to be younger than the general Egyptian workforce A WORKFORCE IN CRISIS While Silicon Valley celebrates AI breakthroughs, our research exposes the human cost behind these innovations. Egyptian workers perform essential tasks—labeling images, transcribing audio, evaluating content, annotating data—that train machine learning models used globally. Yet they earn poverty wages for skilled work requiring technical knowledge and multilingual literacy. “We were struck by the contradiction,” says lead researcher Dr. Myriam Raymond. “These are highly educated individuals—60% hold bachelor’s degrees in science or technical fields—yet they’re earning $1.22 per hour on average, working for global tech companies that profit enormously from their labor.” Our data reveals severe income volatility. Rather than providing stable supplemental income, platform work traps Egyptian workers in a cycle of precarity: Most workers experience volatile or extremely volatile income, with earnings fluctuating dramatically month to month When we asked how workers used their last month’s platform earnings, the results were stark: the overwhelming majority spent their income immediately on rent, food, and clothes. Only a tiny fraction had the financial security to use earnings for hobbies or savings. Platform work serves as a lifeline rather than a source of financial flexibility CONDITIONS WORSE THAN SEVEN YEARS AGO Comparing our findings with the International Labor Organization’s 2018 global study reveals a disturbing trend: conditions for data workers have deteriorated significantly. * Increased education requirements: 70% now hold bachelor’s degrees vs. 57% globally in 2018 * Hourly rates dropped 72%: from $4.43 (2018 global average) to $1.22 (Egypt 2025) * Workforce demographic shift: from married adults with children to precarious single young people OUR RECOMMENDATIONS DiPLab’s report concludes with actionable policy recommendations: For Governments: * Improve measurement of data work in official statistics * Promote financial inclusion for platform workers * Simplify activity registration to encourage formalization * Ensure social security coverage For Platforms: * Implement transparent payment systems with minimum wage requirements * Disclose task allocation criteria clearly * Establish fair conflict resolution mechanisms * Provide dedicated worker support

We are excited to share an important milestone in our research: the publication of a new article just published in a special issue of the journal Globalizations by DiPLab co-founder Paola Tubaro, introducing and developing the concept of the “dual footprint”: the idea that every digital process leaves both a data work imprint and a material, environmental one. The impacts of artificial intelligence on the natural and social surroundings that supply resources for its production and use have been studied separately so far. Tubaro employs the “dual footprint” as a heuristic device to capture the commonalities and interdependencies between them. She uses two in-depth case studies – international flows of raw materials and of data work services between Argentina and the United States on the one hand, and between Madagascar, France and East Asia on the other. They portray the AI industry as a value chain that spans national boundaries and perpetuates inherited global inequalities. The countries that drive AI development, mostly in the Global North, generate a massive demand for inputs and trigger social costs that, through the value chain, largely fall on more peripheral actors. The arrangements in place distribute the costs and benefits of AI unequally, resulting in unsustainable practices and preventing the upward mobility of more disadvantaged countries. If you want to cite this article: > Tubaro, P. (2025). The dual footprint of artificial intelligence: > environmental and social impacts across the globe. Globalizations, 1–18. > https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2025.2589571 You can access the preprint version here: DualFootprint_12072025Download The dual footprint grasps how the environmental and social dimensions of AI production emanate from similar underlying socio-economic processes and geographical trajectories. This framework helps us better understand the true costs of digitalization and the global inequalities it reproduces. It also constitutes the foundation of SEED – Social and Environmental Effects of Data Connectivity, a new project that investigates how data extraction and material extraction are deeply interconnected. It stems from a collaboration with the Núcleo Milenio FAIR at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and compares data and material infrastructures between Europe and South America.

Introducing a new special issue on legal perspectives on artificial intelligence in the French journal Revue de Droit du Travail (Labor Law Review) (Claire Marzo and DiPLab’s Antonio Casilli wrote the extensive introduction—see the end of this post for the preprint version). As part of the special issue, by Dr. Baptiste Delmas, associate professor of law at Paris 1-Panthéon Sorbonne University and co-principal investigator of the DiPLab/IAA project AI WORLd authored a landmark article examining the importance of due diligence laws in ensuring respect of data workers’ fundamental rights. Delmas_-_IA_et_devoir_de_vigilanceDownload Baptiste Delmas (2025). [AI and Due Diligence] Devoir de vigilance et IA. Revue de Droit du Travail, 10, pp. 600-616. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 21ST CENTURY LABORERS Regardless of whether these workers are recruited by digital labor platforms as self-employed workers or access proprietary platforms via subcontractors located around the world, most often in countries where social protections are weaker than elsewhere, the risks of infringing on freedom of association, decent pay, prohibitions on forced or child labour, the right to a healthy and safe working environment, and even respect for personal data are high. Over the last few years, the press have built upon existing scholarship to report on the difficult working conditions experienced by these 21st-century laborers. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- WHO SHOULD BE HELD RESPONSIBLE? This due diligence is an important response to the issue—as well as to identify liabilities. This needs to be addressed seriously. By requiring clients of AI solutions, parent companies, and main contractors to publish an annual due diligence plan containing a detailed risk map, sector by sector and country by country, within their subsidiaries and also among subcontractors and suppliers with whom they have established commercial relationships, this duty can effectively enable a prevention policy by preventing or minimizing these risks. Currently, the French law of 27 March 2017 is the only one in force in a European country that has such a broad scope and has already been implemented. A European directive has been adopted in 2024, but it is currently being challenged by the European Commission on a number of grounds. As part of the due diligence process, the largest French companies that directly provide data preparation services for AI vendors and clients – such as Teleperformance and Capgemini – or that purchase data preparation directly or indirectly by purchasing artificial intelligence services that they intend to deploy need to be concerned about the working conditions of these data workers. As of today, only a handful of companies in the AI sector approach this due diligence with genuine rigor — a point that trade unions and workers’ organisations, both within and beyond France, could usefully remind them of. Read the introduction to the special issue here: Marzo Casilli 2025 RDTDownload Claire Marzo & Antonio A. Casilli (2025). [Regulating AI Hidden Labor] Réguler le travail caché de l’intelligence artificielle. Revue de droit du travail, 2025, 09, pp.520-529.

It has been a particularly productive semester for DiPLab researchers and affiliates in terms of publishing articles and book chapters. Here are the complete citations (and open access links) of our recent contributions that compare data work in various countries. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Special issue of New Political Economy guest-edited by Uma Rani Amara and Nicolas Pons-Vignon on “Power relations in the digital economy” has been published as Volume 30, issue 3 of the journal. It includes our article on “Where does AI come from?”, a comparison of data work in Venezuela, Madagascar, and France. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, and Juana > Torres Cierpe. 2025. “Where Does AI Come from? A Global Case Study across > Europe, Africa, and Latin America.” New Political Economy 30 (3): 359–72. > doi:10.1080/13563467.2025.2462137. (preprint access here: > https://inria.hal.science/hal-04933816v1) The Journal Globalizations has published a special issue on The Political Economy of Artificial Intelligence in Latin America. It features our article on AI labor in Brazil and Argentina. > Tubaro, Paola, Antonio A. Casilli, Mariana Fernández Massi, Julieta Longo, > Juana Torres Cierpe, and Matheus Viana Braz. 2025. “The Digital Labour of > Artificial Intelligence in Latin America: A Comparison of Argentina, Brazil, > and Venezuela.” Globalizations, February, 1–16. > doi:10.1080/14747731.2025.2465171. (preprint access here: > https://cnrs.hal.science/hal-04935984v1) The Handbook of Digital Labor, edited by Jack Linchuan Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, and Richard Maxwell, has been released by Wiley Blackwell. This comprehensive work brings together leading voices on the transformations of labor in the digital age. Among its contributions, our chapter on global inequalities and AI, comparing Venezuela, France, Madagascar, and Brazil. > Casilli, Antonio A., Paola Tubaro, Maxime Cornet, Clément Le Ludec, Juana > Torres-Cierpe, et al. 2025. Global Inequalities in the Production of > Artificial Intelligence: A Four-Country Study on Data Work. In: Jack Linchuan > Qiu, Shinjoung Yeo, Richard Maxwell (eds.). The Handbook of Digital Labor, > Wiley Blackwell, pp.219-232, 2025, ISBN10: 9781119981800. (preprint access > here: https://hal.science/hal-04742532v2) The journal New Technology, Work and Employment has made available, as an online first, the new article by Juana Torres-Cierpe and Paola Tubaro about Venezuelan data workers. > Torres-Cierpe, Juana and Paola Tubaro. 2025. Uninvited Protagonists: The > Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers. New Technology, Work and > Employment. https://doi.org/10.1111/ntwe.12340 (preprint access here: > https://hal.science/hal-05041068v1)

We’re proud to share that DiPLab research was featured at the 9th Regulating for Decent Work (RDW) Conference, hosted by the International Labour Office in Geneva from 2–4 July 2025. In a joint paper with Nagla Rizk (A2K4D, American University in Cairo), DiPLab’s Myriam Raymond presented research titled Regulating Digital Platform Payments: Barriers to Fair Compensation and Policy Implications for Egyptian Microworkers. > This study draws on extensive survey data (N=948) and focus group discussions > with Egyptian microworkers performing small online tasks on global platforms.  > It sheds light on the lived reality of financial precarity: unpredictable > payments, opaque fees, currency exchange losses, and reliance on informal > intermediaries. Many workers remain excluded from fair financial participation > due to technical, institutional, and regulatory gaps. Our findings emphasize > that these payment frictions are not marginal inconveniences—they are central > to workers’ experience and reinforce their vulnerability in ways largely > invisible to existing labor regulation. The paper calls for targeted financial > inclusion policies, better platform accountability, and a serious rethink of > regulatory frameworks to protect microworkers as legitimate workers deserving > fair pay and institutional support. > > Within the frame of this ongoing study, a closed-door meeting with key > policymakers and public actors will be convened on November 2025. Amongst the > participants: Egyptian Ministry of ManPower, Central Bank of Egypt, Central > Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), ILO Egypt’s office, > National Telecommunications Regulating Agency (NTRA), Financial Regulatory > Authority (FRA), and the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises Development Agency > (MSMEDA).   This year’s RDW theme focused on Strengthening labour institutions and worker voice to deliver decent employment. It brought together an extraordinary range of grounded research from all over the globe—scholars, policymakers, and practitioners all exchanging ideas on how to make work fairer, safer, and more inclusive. Every session, keynote, and plenary was packed with insights. It was a privilege to be part of such a collective effort where research meets purpose and gives real meaning to what we do.

The Défenseur des droits, France’s national rights watchdog, has just made public their latest decision (Decision No. 2025-086) concerning a major French platform that offers internet users micro-tasks in exchange for payment. This landmark ruling follows an in-depth investigation into discriminatory recruitment practices—based on nationality, bank domiciliation, and place of residence—brought to light with the support of DiPLab’s research, after the French data authority CNIL – Commission Nationale de l’Informatique et des Libertés had already flagged the platform. DiPLab’s 104-page anonymized report “Discriminations and vulnerabilities in France’s micro-work platforms” (in French) provided critical evidence and analysis. Our key scientific contribution was the development of a “vulnerability index,” a novel statistical measure that reveals how economic precarity can lead to indirect discrimination among microworkers. This tool—pioneering in its application to platform-based data work—helped demonstrate how structural conditions on these platforms can unfairly disadvantage certain groups. The Défenseur des Droits’ final recommendations to the platform include eliminating discriminatory registration criteria, increasing transparency in worker evaluation and payment systems, limiting intrusive personal data collection, and auditing algorithmic systems for potential biases. This decision carries significant implications for DiPLab. Being formally consulted and cited in such a high-level ruling affirms the scientific value and societal relevance of our work. It validates our methodological innovations—particularly the vulnerability Inde—as tools for understanding and addressing structural inequalities in digital labor. The outcome strengthens DiPLab’s position as a trusted partner for institutions, NGOs, and regulators working on platform fairness and algorithmic accountability, while providing a concrete case study that will inform future research. For a preview of our continuing work in this area, we invite you to attend our upcoming presentation at the INSNA Sunbelt Social Network Conference (June 23–29, 2025, Paris). Paola Tubaro, Antonio Casilli, José Luis Molina, and Antonio Santos-Ortega will present a comparative study on data worker vulnerability in France and Spain (see link in comment).

The journal New Technology, Work and Employment just published the article Uninvited Protagonists: The Networked Agency of Venezuelan Platform Data Workers, co-authored by DiPLab’s Paola Tubaro and Juana Torres-Cierpe. New-Technol-Work-Employ-2025-Cierpe-Uninvited-Protagonists-The-Networked-Agency-of-Venezuelan-Platform-Data-Workers Workers in Venezuela are powering AI production, often under tough conditions. Sanctions and a deep political-economic crisis have pushed them to work for platforms that pay in US dollars, albeit at low rates. They constitute a large reservoir for technology producers from rich countries. But they are not passive players. They build resilience, rework their environment, and sometimes engage in acts of resistance, with support from different segments of their personal networks. From strong local ties to loose online connections, these informal webs help them cope, adapt, and occasionally push back. Their diversified relationships comprise an unofficial and often hidden, albeit largely digitised relational infrastructure that sustains their work and shapes collective action. These findings invite to rethink agency as embedded in workers’ personal networks. To respond to adversities, one must liaise with equally affected peers, with family and friends who offer support, etc. Social ties ultimately determine who is enabled to respond, and who is not; whether any benefits and costs are shared, and with whom; whether any solution will be conflictual or peaceful. Social networks are not accessory but constitute the very channel through which Venezuelan data workers cope with hardship. Not all relationships play the same role, though. Venezuelans discover online data work through their strong ties with family, close friends, and neighbours. To convert their online earnings into local currency, they rely on their broader social networks of relatives and friends living abroad and indirect relationships with intermediaries. For managing their day-to-day activities, Venezuelans expand their social networks through online services like Facebook, WhatsApp, and Telegram, connecting with diverse and less-close peers within and outside the country. Different social ties affect the various stages of the data working experience. Overall, no Venezuelan could work alone – and the networked interactions that sustain each of them against hardship have made them massively present, as ‘uninvited protagonists,’ in international platforms. Their massive presence in the planetary data-tasking market is a supply rather than demand-driven phenomenon. This analysis also sheds light on the reasons why mobilisation is uncommon among platform data workers. Other studies noted diverging orientations of workers, unclear goals, lack of focus, and insufficient leadership. Another powerful reason hinges upon the predominance of weak ties in building up online group membership: indeed, distant acquaintances are insufficient to prompt people to action if their intrinsic motivations are low. The article is available in open access here.

We share the exciting news of two new papers that were published last month, concerning parts of the extensive research DiPLab conducts on the networks of production of AI The first paper is titled “Where does AI come from? A global case study across Europe, Africa, and Latin America” (by P. Tubaro, A.A. Casilli, M. Cornet, C. le Ludec and J. Torres Cierpe), appears in New Political Economy’s special issue on power in the digital economy. It examines AI supply chains, focusing on how and where companies recruit workers for data annotation and other essential tasks. While the organisation of AI data work varies, the reasons for these differences and the ways it dovetails with local economies were underexplored. This article clarifies these supply chains’ structures, highlighting their impacts on labour conditions and remunerations. Framing AI as an instance of well-known outsourcing and offshoring trends, analysis of AI data work in France, Madagascar, and Venezuela, highlights two main models: marketplace-like contracts and firm-like structures, with hybrid arrangements in between. Each model suits different AI tasks but all reproduce well-known patterns of exclusion that harm externalised workers especially in the Global South. We argue that worker reclassification alone is insufficient and advocate for a broader policy mix, including regulation of technology and development strategies at national and supra-national levels. You may find an open access version of the preprint of the paper here -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The second paper is titled “The digital labour of artificial intelligence in Latin America: a comparison of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela” (by P. Tubaro, A.A. Casilli, M. Fernández Massi, J. Longo, J. Torres Cierpe and M. Viana Braz) appears in Globalizations’ special issue on AI in Latin America. It sheds light on the precarious, low-paid data workers supporting AI production in the region, often for foreign firms. Mixed-method data support a comparison of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela to reveal common patterns and regional differences. The analysis supports the conclusion that Latin America plays a key role in AI data work, with companies exploiting economic hardship to cut costs. In Venezuela and Argentina, crisis conditions foster an ‘elite’ of young, STEM-educated workers, while in Brazil, this work is done by lower-income groups. In all three countries, AI data work also blends with the informal economy, reinforcing inequality in this way. These findings call for more attention to AI labour conditions and advocate for policies to recognise data workers’ skills and support their career development, potentially enabling worker organisation. You may find an open access version of the preprint of the paper here