Digitalisation of society and transformation of young people's work experience: contributions to understand precariousness and emerging gaps from South Global

PEDRO LISDERO

Encuentro; Meeting of the members of the Global Interdisciplinary Policy Research Network on Youth; 2020

The numerous research studies that describe and explain the transformations of the "world of work" over the last twenty years cannot ignore the "global/local" component running through these phenomena. There are no isolated processes in the re-configuration of the work experience of millions of youth dispersed in different parts of the world, which requires investigating how certain links are established between global processes and their specific manifestations in particular regions.In this context, it is important to understand how and why the reconfiguration of work experiences comes about in relation to the massification of the changes produced by the digitalisation of society. The advent of the digital society means that all areas of people's lives are colonised by the logic of the "digital processes", and thus the different work experiences are affected (not only those that deal with the production and distribution of ICTs). The modern dichotomies that gave meaning to the organisation and definition of everyday situations, such as the division between work and leisure, between the company/factory and home, the public and the private, etc., begin to lose meaning, and he meaning of work changes due to the expansion of phenomena such as home-working, tele-working, the overlapping between the spheres of “consumption” and “production” (“prosumer”), working on platforms, etc.This presentation explores the connections between these two critical dimensions of the social structuration process in Latin America: the restructuring of the “world of work” (particularly in the experience of young people) and the impact of the “digitalisation” of society. In order to highlight some components of the research agenda, we propose a comprehensive view of the "precariousness" associated with young people's digital labour as the re-configuration of the body as a productive territory. Thus, "digital gaps" become the marks in young bodies from which it is possible to think the Global South / North reconfigurations.