5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

As a high-income and “high-skilled” labor group, tech workers worldwide typically hold elite socioeconomic positions. However, in recent years, their experiences of indiscriminate layoffs, heightened surveillance, overwork, and suspension of rights and benefits have revealed the precarity of white-collar tech jobs. Various cases of tech workers’ activism have also drawn sociologists’ attention. These workers mobilize not only against employers, but also around broader social justice issues like gender equality, war, and climate change. Amidst these cases of privilege, precarity, and activism, how do we understand the many identities of tech workers? How do different global and local contexts shape the elements and experiences of tech work? How do tech workers navigate the social, political, and economic challenges of their times? How do rapidly changing technologies shape tech workers’ identities and actions? In this session, presenters will share their research and seek answers to these questions.

The following are some recommended topics, but papers on all other relevant issues are welcome.

1. AI and tech workers
2. Migration and tech work
3. Cultural landscape of tech work
4. Democracy, nationalism, citizenship and tech workers
5. Tech workers in authoritarian contexts
6. Race, caste, ethnicity, gender and tech work
7. Tech workers in the Global South vs. the Global North
8. Surveillance on tech workers
9. Tech workers’ activism and solidarity with other labor groups
10. Tech workers in platform capitalism

Please send 300-word abstracts with 4-6 keywords to the organizer at rianka.roy@gmail.com.

Session format: Regular session (maximum five 20-minute oral presentations)