OUTSOURCING IN THE DIGITAL AGE: old problems and new challenges

Abstract

The article takes up the debates in Latin American labor studies on labor outsourcing to demonstrate certain lines of continuity with the development of new forms of work mediated by digital technologies in recent years. In particular, it seeks to argue that the emergence of working platforms has implied an organizational reconfiguration mediated by technological advances and the digitalization processes of the economy that may be disruptive in certain aspects, but that also imply a continuity and an intensification of existing processes of flexibilization and outsourcing. In this sense, the article offers some interpretation keys of specialized literature to understand the new phenomenon (its logics, complexity, variability) as well as its implications and effects on the socio-labor field (precariousness, ambivalences, heterogeneity).