Flexible work, rigid politics: Platformization, aspirations, and the making of the authoritariat in the global south by Rosana Pinheiro-Machado, Miguel Paolo Rivera, Wagner Guilherme Alves da Silva, Rashmi Guha Ray, Marina Frid, and Jessica Matheus de Souza published by Dialogues on Digital Society (2025).
This article examines the intersection of flexible digital labor and rigid authoritarian politics in the Global South. Based on ethnographies in Brazil, India, and the Philippines, it introduces the concept of the authoritariat to describe segments of the working class drawn to reactionary populism through a combination of economic precarity and aspirational desire. Major digital labor platforms, as ideological technologies, enable a bifurcation that recenters the individual and fosters a perceived detachment from politics, thereby deepening the abyss between labor and political life. As platform work and digital entrepreneurship reshape notions of success, autonomy, and class identity, many workers come to embrace authoritarian leaders who promise order, moral certainty, and opportunity. The article argues that the emotional and economic logic of the digital economy play a key role in transforming political subjectivity. Far from passive victims or ideologically radicalized citizens, these individuals navigate a contradictory terrain of exclusion and self-worth.
