Antonio Casilli’s new chapter for the edited volume Digital Labour in a Turbulent Era, edited by Paola Tubaro, has been pre-published. The book will be published in November of this year. Entitled “The Making of the Data Working Class,” the chapter marks a “turning point” for its author: public awareness of data workers is growing rapidly, and they are starting to fight back and resist. Casilli starts the chapter by describing two categories of workers supporting AI production. The first one consists of tech workers, such as data scientists, data analysts, and software engineers, who are also described as the “AI middle class.” They are highly educated and enjoy a relatively privileged position in the social hierarchy. In contrast, a vast pool of precarious workers operates in the shadows. These “digital blue-collar workers,” who train models, label data, and moderate platform content, are not only rendered invisible but also silenced by corporate non-disclosure clauses. Their position is further shaped by the fact that many of them are located in the Global South. Corrected version He identifies three distinct processes that prefigure the development of a collective class identity: First, the proliferation of academic concepts used to define data work and data workers. Second, the process through which data workers and civil society have adopted, adapted, and reappropriated these definitions. And finally, the historical perspective in which these two processes are embedded, and the ways in which this new labour class has been politically conceptualized over the past decades. He argues that the shifting concepts used by scholars and the proliferation of names adopted by workers themselves are both signs of an ongoing process of class identity formation. Read the chapter here Casilli, Antonio A. (2026), ‘The Making of the Data Working Class’, in P. Tubaro (ed.) Digital Labour in a Turbulent Era, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, at HAL science