Description
The objective of this literature review is to examine how digital labour is rendered invisible as changing labour processes impact social, political and economic relations. Two main questioned guide this review: 1) In what ways does the notion of invisibility tie to the gendered, racialized and classed nature of digital labour? 2) Whose labour has always been and continues to be invisible? With a focus on platform labour, formal labour and automation, this literature review identifies four main ways that capital accumulation in the digital economy depends on hidden labour. The first section draws from two main concepts, the digital housewife (Jarrett, 2022) and the housework economy (Haraway, 2006), to apply and understand the process and outcome of the feminization of digital labour. The second section draws on the interconnectedness of exclusion and predatory inclusion to outline how technology reproduces racial hierarchies through digital labour (Benjamin, 2018; McMillan Cottom, 2022). The third section constructs the paradox of invisibility and hypervisibility as a simultaneously occurring phenomenon exacerbated by digital labour (Benjamin, 2018; Sangster, 2017). Finally, the last section examines how women, racialized and migrant workers navigate invisibility and ensure that their labour and working conditions are seen and improved. Through a review of existing scholarship on digital labour, this paper identifies key concepts and theoretical framings that contest the myth of objectivity surrounding digital technologies.
