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Sangarapillai, Vahini (2023) Unequal Working Futures and Machine Intelligence. PhD thesis, University of Nottingham.

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Abstract

Sonya, a participant in this study, talking about technological change, said it is important to ‘imagine, remember before.’ From remembering to imagining, I explore workers’ imagined working futures as influenced by social positions, drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of capitals and habitus, which offers a relational view of the future of work.

Machine intelligence and the future of work is widely discussed, and workers are talked about as likely or less likely victims of automation. In this thesis, I have brought together Science and Technology Studies’ resistance to technological determinism and the sociology of work’s concern with social relations and the experience of work. In developing the concept of the sociotechnical imagination, built of sociotechnical imaginaries (Jasonoff, 2015) and Mills’ (1959) sociological imagination, I call in experts of everyday experiences of work – workers themselves.

The workers in this study are delineated by class to explore hierarchies of power, including the power to influence the future. The concept of control (Marx, 1930, 1946) is used to differentiate working conditions and denotes class (Braverman, 1974; Friedman, 1977). The research design incorporates three worlds of work, drawing participants from a purposeful sampling based on level of control (or autonomy), proximity to technology development and future focus within their work. The participants worked in knowledge work, AI development and factory work.

The sample of participants includes workers at intersections of class, race and gender to explore how futures constructed by workers are influenced by experiences of work at intersections. Therefore, workers’ imagined futures are treated as sociological artefacts, taking shape in the context of machine intelligence that is always in a state of becoming. I asked workers to talk about their working lives and to project working futures alongside their imagined forms of machine intelligence. Through semi-structured interviews, participants talked about how their work could be reconfigured, the extent to which they could benefit in those imagined futures and how they envisaged machine intelligence and the future of work in society.

Workers’ futures alongside machine intelligence are influenced by social positions and forms of capital (Bourdieu, 1984). My research found five orientations to the future, influenced by the sense of agency felt in working lives. The study highlights the elasticity between social position and imagined working futures as well as the sense of potential afforded by a developing technology in the gaps between the past, present and future tenses. Within this space, the concept of machine intelligence capital and its relationship to other forms of capital, particularly amongst workers at intersections of class, gender and race, is developed.

Item Type:	Thesis (University of Nottingham only) (PhD)
Supervisors:	Goulden, Murray Warren, Tracey
Keywords:	Future of work; intersectionality; experience of work; technological change
Subjects:	H Social sciences > HM Sociology
Faculties/Schools:	UK Campuses > Faculty of Social Sciences, Law and Education > School of Sociology and Social Policy
Item ID:	74340
Depositing User:	Sangarapillai, Vahini
Date Deposited:	02 Jun 2025 09:08
Last Modified:	02 Jun 2025 09:08
URI:	https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/id/eprint/74340

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