Migration and Labor In the Age of Enhanced Surveillance

The rapid expansion of a vast set of increasingly invasive digital technologies is enabling tech companies and governments to amass huge amounts of data on individual workers and labor groups with little privacy check. Sometimes referred to as data colonialism because of the potential to profit from reselling these data to third-party buyers, these technologies are increasingly enhancing government power over individual citizens and migrants, and eroding their labor rights at the same time. These surveillance technologies work in tandem with government attempts to redefine who is a citizen and who is a migrant. As a result, traditional understanding of rights for citizens and migrants are being contested in many countries. Depending on the working of political systems now, many legal migrants and minoritized citizens are being turned into de facto stateless people as they are distanced from rights. They are constantly monitored, deported and/or held in private for-profit facilities where their citizenship and labor rights are in jeopardy. How are these conditions changing the traditional identities and collective action strategies of workers as citizens and migrants?

This session invites papers on theoretical or methodological approaches and empirical studies of citizens and migrants in labor roles and in labor movements, who are navigating this era of enhanced surveillance. Papers on international and internal migrants are encouraged, along with workers across political and citizenship identities who are being reduced to a status of statelessness.