Europe is investing billions in artificial intelligence, cloud infrastructure, semiconductors and data centres, but who actually builds and maintains that infrastructure often remains overlooked in the debate. Political scientist Julia Rone (VU) is using an ERC Starting Grant to study, for the first time systematically, the role labour migrants play in Europe’s digital transition.
Rone studies labour migration across the entire technology stack, from chips and networks to cloud and AI. A key starting point of her project is that digital labour should be viewed more broadly than highly skilled specialists alone: medium- and lower-skilled labour migrants, involved for instance in building and maintaining data centres, are also essential to digital infrastructure, yet their contribution often remains overlooked in research.
Rone also maps how the rules and practices surrounding digital labour migration take shape, by examining the interplay between policymakers, companies, trade unions and workers. Her research thereby connects two issues usually treated separately: migration and digitalisation. According to Rone, Europe’s pursuit of digital strategic autonomy cannot be seen apart from the workers who build the necessary infrastructure, and a growing reliance on labour migrants also raises questions about working conditions and the position of employees who often hold temporary contracts.
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