Digital Sovereignty, Location and Environment: Evolving Ecosystems for Work and Employment

Digitalisation is transforming work and employment across local, national, and transnational contexts. As digital technologies increasingly shape economic and social life, questions of digital sovereignty, i.e. the capacity of states, organisations, and individuals to control digital infrastructures, data, and technological choices, have become central. The concept of ecosystems captures the variety of actors, sites and infrastructures through which sovereignty is exercised, challenged or undermined both in and around the workplace.

This session invites papers engaging with the contested and relational practices shaping the development, implementation, and experience of digital technologies at work, including their physical and environmental impacts. Papers in this session deepen understanding of shifting power dynamics between states, firms and workers over control of digital infrastructure, and of how this shapes multilevel governance, location and patterns of participation and exclusion.

We invite papers conceptualising and empirically investigating digital sovereignty and ecosystems in relation to;

• understanding how the locations of work and employment are affected by the evolution of digital ecosystems.

• implementation of technological control systems in the workplace

• new and emerging global digital value chains,

• tensions between environmental interests and job creation

• governance of the twin green and digital transition,

• social movement mobilization against the tech industry

Methodologically, the session is open to qualitative, quantitative, historical and mixed-methods approaches, as well as conceptual and comparative work.