Futures of industrial work? Economic restructuring and the ambivalent realities of technological change

What the paper says

The ‘future of work’ in manufacturing or similarly positioned ‘productive’ sectors is an increasing public and academic concern. Debate tends to polarize between anxious and dystopic accounts that explore the threat of technological change to existing industries and celebratory, optimistic accounts that focus on the ambitious promises of possible futures. In response, a critical labour studies scholarship has argued that these narratives tend to be overly determined by conversations about technology and less focused on how technological transformation has historically and will continue to exacerbate, reinscribe, or reshape existing exclusions within labour markets and workplaces. These optimistic narratives also fail to address the non-technological drivers of the global restructuring of work and employment, in particular the way the current realities of work are rooted in (neo)colonial, racialized, and gendered histories and presents of exploitation, resource extraction, and social reproduction. Drawing on five empirical contributions from a variety of industrial contexts across the Global South and North, this special issue deepens our understanding of how ‘future of work’ discourses and practices, including efforts (and desires) to automate and innovate, impact and coexist with industries and labour relations that have hitherto been slow to automate, remain un-automated, or are resistant to technological change.