Youth and Artificial Intelligence: Employment, Inequalities, and Emerging Labor Experiences

The integration of youth into the labor market has been a widely documented social issue since the 1980s. In recent decades, entering productive activities has been marked by unemployment, instability, and precariousness. Today, a new phenomenon is rapidly transforming these scenarios: the global deployment of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in productive structures. Within this context, youth face unprecedented challenges. While they often possess greater familiarity with digital technologies and high adaptability, the expansion of AI tends to reduce entry-level opportunities for those starting their career paths, while accelerating the obsolescence of previously valued knowledge and skills. These transformations raise fundamental questions about the future of work, economic integration, and new inequalities affecting younger generations, which this session aims to address.

Therefore, we invite papers based on qualitative, quantitative, or mixed research that address, among others, the following core themes:

• Reconfiguration of skills and job access conditions: Examining how the automation of entry-level or routine tasks (traditionally associated with youth) transforms labor insertion pathways and redefines required competencies.
• Transformations in youth employment: Analyzing shifts in occupational structures derived from automation, the creation and disappearance of occupations, and the reconfiguration of youth opportunities.
• Intersectional inequalities and technological gaps: Exploring how AI produces, reproduces, or reconfigures inequalities among youth, considering class, gender, ethnicity, migratory status, disability, sexual orientation, and territory.
• Youth experiences, subjectivities, and strategies: Exploring the perceptions, meanings, and action strategies of youth regarding AI, including adaptation, resistance, and the shaping of life projects under accelerated technological change.