Migration and Labour Working Group – Roundtable 6: ‘Automation’

In current times, it would be impossible to discuss the topics of migration and labour without acknowledging the role played by machines and technology in human lives and in both processes. Furthermore, the debate around the Anthropocene (see Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene. The Earth, History and Us, 2016) lead us to a new way of interpreting the humanities. This roundtable aims to explore how new definitions of human and technology can affect the way we discuss the topics of migration and labour, with particular reference to (but not exclusively): 

• Ecological concerns and climate change
• Biotechnology
• Machine superintelligence and its relations with human labour
• Possibilities of more-than-human societies 
• Narratives of labour in relation to artificial intelligence
• Posthumanist readings of migration and labour