Digital labour and authoritarianism: mapping transformations under platform capitalism from the Global South
This special issue examines the relationship between the transformations brought about by platform capitalism within the labour and communication landscapes of Global South contexts and contemporary authoritarianism.
Digital labour encompasses a wide spectrum of activities, from the so-called free labour of social media users to the platform-mediated work of delivery and gig workers (Jarrett, 2022). This labour fuels the profit-making mechanisms of platform capitalism (Srnicek, 2017) and, as scholars have increasingly shown, contributes to the production of political subjectivities that favor authoritarianism (Pinheiro-Machado et al., 2025), particularly in the Global South.
Building upon this analysis, this special issue examines the relationship between the transformations brought about by platform capitalism within the labour and communication landscapes of Global South contexts and contemporary authoritarianism. To do so, it brings together two complementary theoretical lines of inquiry: the understanding of authoritarianism as a practice, not reducible to regime types (Glasius, 2023, IRGAC, 2022), and the account of platform capitalism as a structural configuration of labour and value extraction (Haidar & Keine, 2021). This articulation allows us to analyze how the reorganization of labour relations under platform capitalism generates authoritarian practices both within and beyond the state.
By examining how platform capitalism's reordering of labour relations interacts with existing inequalities structured by race, class, and colonial legacies, this special issue aims to center concerns from the Global South within broader discussions on digital labour, authoritarianism, and platform capitalism. The extent of this exploitation and the socio-economic and political shifts it has produced are not uniform worldwide. Platform capitalism reproduces colonial hierarchies and contributes to authoritarian practices across different Global South contexts.
This special issue maps such shifts across various parts of the Global South and the ways in which they intensify democratic backsliding in postcolonial contexts. Particular attention will be paid to the political and ideological dimensions of digital labour exploitation and to the tech-imaginaries that platform capitalism generates and disseminates across the capitalist periphery. The special issue is equally interested in how workers, communities, and social movements push back against these authoritarian dynamics — and in the forms of labour and organisation resistance requires.
The broad questions that the special issue intends to address will include the following:
- How do platform capitalism’s reformulation of labour relations contribute to the emergence of new formations and practices in contexts where a large majority of the population works in precarious conditions in the informal economy? How can we trace the links between authoritarianism and this reformulation?
- What political and ideological work do tech-imaginaries perform in contexts of right-wing authoritarianism? How do the agendas of big technology companies produce and circulate such imaginaries across the capitalist periphery?
- How does digital colonialism function within specific parts of the Global South, in relation to labour exploitation, and how does it interact with existing inequalities structured by race, class, and colonial legacies?
- How do extreme forms of labour exploitation — including coerced or severely underpaid data work — sustain the development of artificial intelligence while deepening existing hierarchies between the Global North and South?
- How do people use digital platforms to resist authoritarianism? What kind of labour is required to develop such resistant practices? What are the challenges involved in locating such resistance within the contours set by platform capitalism?
The special issue invites theoretical explorations as well as empirically grounded work that responds to these questions from the perspective of the Global South and sheds light on how platform capitalism's configuration of digital labour contributes to the expansion of contemporary authoritarianism.
References
Glasius, M. (2023). Authoritarian Practices in a Global Age. Oxford University Press.
Haidar, J., & Keune, M. (Eds.). (2021). Work and Labour Relations in Global Platform Capitalism. Edward Elgar Publishing.
IRGAC (2022). Global Authoritarianism: Perspectives and Contestations from the South. transcript Verlag.
Jarrett, K. (2022). Digital labor. Polity Press.
Pinheiro-Machado, R., Rivera, M. P., Alves da Silva, W. G., Ray, R. G., Frid, M., & de Souza, J. M. (2025). Flexible work, rigid politics: Platformization, aspirations, and the making of the authoritariat in the Global South. Dialogues on Digital Society, 1(3), 343–347.
Srnicek, N. (2017). Platform Capitalism. Verso.
Submission Instructions
The guest editors request interested authors to please send their abstracts to:
dlaspecialissue@gmail.com by the 5th of May 2026.
Authors will be notified if their paper has been selected for the special issue after the deadline.
The special issue proposal is under consideration by Third World Quarterly. The journal actively encourages contributions from scholars currently based in the Global South.
Special Issue Editor(s)
Dr. Fathima Nizaruddin, University of Passau, fathima.nizaruddin@uni-passau.de
Dr. Gustavo Robles, Universidad Nacional de La Plata and University of Passau
Min Htin Kyaw Lat, University of Passau
Journal information
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