Labor Precarities In the Global South and North: Super-Exploitation, Technology, and Strategies of Resistance

The concept of labor precarity is structured around the absence of regulation, manifesting as structural instability and insecurity. Its most evident manifestation emerges at the intersection of informality and flexibilization—dimensions that encapsulate the dismantling of welfare regimes and restrict the full integration of workers into consumer society and the effective exercise of citizenship. A broader structural perspective argues, however, that the condition of non-ownership of the means of production imprints an ontologically precarious character on all labor relations, differentiated by gender, territory, age, and migratory origin.

Its intensity is expressed through differential access to social and economic rights, the possibilities of reconciling work and reproductive life, and the degree of commodification of essential goods such as health and education. Material exclusion finds ideological reinforcement in narratives that exalt individualism and autonomy amidst atomization and the decline of collective solidarity. Within this framework, technological advancements deepen precarization through the destruction, adaptation, and substitution of tasks. This exacerbates a social malaise that fuels discriminatory discourses and far-right political projects with segregationist and punitive agendas.

The session proposes to explore: how precarity is configured across different contexts and subjects; how it impacts political subjectivity and collective action; how it varies territorially according to regulatory frameworks and levels of commodification; and how technology and atomization erode democratic participation and labor organization.