New Article: DiPLab’s Paola Tubaro and Juana Torres on Venezuela’s Data WorkersThe 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.
