Periodic Reporting for period 1 - BehindAI (Building Responsible Technology: Global Digital Transformations, Tech Workers’ Agency and the Making of Artificial Intelligence)
Reporting period: 2023-04-01 to 2025-03-31
The global digitalization process is often understood through a focus on some “disruptive” or “innovative” tech products or on the relentless public efforts to regulate the big tech companies releasing them, easing their social impacts and restraining the self-proclaimed grand visions of the high-profile Silicon Valley’s CEOs.
And yet, the driving force behind the development and maintenance of the incredibly expansive technology ecosystem sustaining modern digital life – apps, websites or platforms used by millions of workers and clients across the globe – is actually to be found in a sprawling network of tech consultancy companies. These employ hundreds of thousands of tech workers spread across tech powerhouses in the Majority World, such as India or Brazil, in various forms of subcontracting or outsourcing contracts with clients based in Europe or the US.
But who are these workers? In which way are their life trajectories, rooted in Southern Asia or Latin America, coming to inform their views about technology, the conception they have of their own work, and their very experiences in the industry? And how is the international division of labour that structures the global software services industry shaping both their work environment and the kinds of technologies they build?
And yet, the driving force behind the development and maintenance of the incredibly expansive technology ecosystem sustaining modern digital life – apps, websites or platforms used by millions of workers and clients across the globe – is actually to be found in a sprawling network of tech consultancy companies. These employ hundreds of thousands of tech workers spread across tech powerhouses in the Majority World, such as India or Brazil, in various forms of subcontracting or outsourcing contracts with clients based in Europe or the US.
But who are these workers? In which way are their life trajectories, rooted in Southern Asia or Latin America, coming to inform their views about technology, the conception they have of their own work, and their very experiences in the industry? And how is the international division of labour that structures the global software services industry shaping both their work environment and the kinds of technologies they build?
These questions are at the very core of this ongoing Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Postdoctoral project focusing on the trajectories and worldviews of tech workers – developers, designers, researchers, quality analysts and product or project managers – originating from Brazil and India, with substantial experience in global development teams. Based on in-depth interviews with these workers and long-term ethnographic immersions in these two technology leaders of the Global South, the research thus uncovers their often critical perspectives on the inner-workings of the global tech industry.
Through these dialogues with these technologists, it is indeed the many social, cultural and political challenges of tech consultancy in a context of global division of labour that become visible. These include highlighting the many repercussions and boundaries associated with developing technologies as workers (in a wage labour relation with a private company, itself working for another company) and consultants (in a commercial relationship where the technologists’ working hours, knowledge and skills became the products to be sold to a client) from the Majority World (in a neocolonial relation with both companies and clients based in the Minority World).
Through these dialogues with these technologists, it is indeed the many social, cultural and political challenges of tech consultancy in a context of global division of labour that become visible. These include highlighting the many repercussions and boundaries associated with developing technologies as workers (in a wage labour relation with a private company, itself working for another company) and consultants (in a commercial relationship where the technologists’ working hours, knowledge and skills became the products to be sold to a client) from the Majority World (in a neocolonial relation with both companies and clients based in the Minority World).
Initial findings suggest that these offshore workers often feel pressured to adapt to social realities and norms very far apart from their own social context but still deemed “self-evident” by clients or onshore managers. They also reveal the very limited space actually existing, if at all, to share doubts or even to engage in conversations regarding the social impact and actual use case of the tech products being built. Lastly, they pointed out the way in which the relationship with the actual users, and the definition of the overall objectives of the project, ended up being so mediated by the whole structure of the client companies and the underlying subcontracting hierarchies that they became somehow abstract and out of reach. This opens several questions regarding both the control these workers have over the product of their own labour and the coloniality of power in this knowledge-intensive industry.
A second dimension arising from the very dynamic of global software development teams is the imposition of Global Business English as the de facto workplace lingua franca, in either non-English speaking (Brazil) or highly multilingual (India) societies. Facing European or North American clients or managers very often with no multi-linguistic experience or knowledge of the social and cultural backgrounds of the Majority World’s team members, this dynamic of coloniality through language has a significant impact on the production of subjectivities in these global remote tech workplaces. It hinders the technologists’ abilities to deploy and be recognized for the full range of their knowledge and skills, and putting them at greater risk of discriminatory hiring practices and making them more vulnerable to poor performance reviews or even lay-offs.
A second dimension arising from the very dynamic of global software development teams is the imposition of Global Business English as the de facto workplace lingua franca, in either non-English speaking (Brazil) or highly multilingual (India) societies. Facing European or North American clients or managers very often with no multi-linguistic experience or knowledge of the social and cultural backgrounds of the Majority World’s team members, this dynamic of coloniality through language has a significant impact on the production of subjectivities in these global remote tech workplaces. It hinders the technologists’ abilities to deploy and be recognized for the full range of their knowledge and skills, and putting them at greater risk of discriminatory hiring practices and making them more vulnerable to poor performance reviews or even lay-offs.