Abstract
The article explores the experiences of people displaced from work by the introduction of labour-saving technology in Finland. Interviews with 13 unemployed individuals are used as data. The study is underpinned by a Marxist interpretation of potentially emancipatory technology under capitalism reduced to an instrument for reorganizing skilled workers into an exploitable, precarious cadre of surplus and abstract labour. Loïc Wacquant’s thesis on advanced marginality is used as a theoretical framework to unpack and understand the little-studied experience of being displaced from work by technology. The interviewees share a sense of growing alienation and social exclusion. Feeding these experiences are capricious changes in skill-demands and deskilling under automation and robotisation of work. The experiences are exacerbated by digitalised, vertiginous and isolating job-seeking and employment services that cast responsibility on the unemployed individual. While the participants of this study were not on the brink of acute or extreme socio-economic marginalisation, their experiences are rooted in the very same social, economic and political dynamics as advanced marginality. The findings of the study help anticipate the risk of advancing marginality faced by displaced workers, if social policy reforms are not carried out in the short term. In the long term, the findings support the argument that studies on labour-saving technologies and unemployment pay closer attention to the particular role of technology under capitalism.
Highlights
The story of Finnish companies’ significant advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) during the 1990s has been told countless times
The experience of unemployment reflected the increasing digitalisation of employment services and job seeking, which play a part in the process that Wacquant (2008) calls the political dynamic of advanced marginality or retrenchment of the welfare state, which I turn to
The analysis was rooted in a Marxist understanding of the relation between technology and unemployment, while Wacquant’s (2008) thesis of advanced marginality was used to unpack the experiences
Summary
The story of Finnish companies’ significant advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) during the 1990s has been told countless times. The experiences of interviewees shed light on new demands for education, use and access to employment services and job seeking, and the need to develop social policies.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
