Future of work is an important subject of interest for scholars and practitioners who are interested in understanding the implications for work and workers. Of particular concern are changes related to technological developments including artificial intelligence (AI) and automation together with increasing precarious working conditions, short term or zero hour contracts, limited social protection and uncertain wages. These developments are also followed by the challenges to class formation due to decreasing union strength, slow growth service economies, and subcontracting models on one hand and rising authoritarianism, unravelling of social democracies, and the disintegrating political Left on the other.
By directing attention to the concept of ‘meaningful work’ I show how workers in low-paid and precarious work struggle for autonomy and dignity. By presenting data from my research on content moderators in India and migrant platform workers in Germany, I show three measures of meaningfulness, namely autonomy, self actualization, and inclusive working conditions. The examination of what constitutes meaningful work for workers in the Global South and for minoritized populations such as migrants, groups that are often excluded from conventional frameworks, we can situate their experiences within global inequalities and imagine what a more just future of work might look like. More broadly, it allows us to ask what work means and its value for workers beyond the wage relation.