Europe Facing the Digitization of Work: The Political Risks Etudes de l'Ifri, September 2018
The nature of work has been remarkably transformed in a short period of time through the combined effect of globalization and technological disruptions. Ongoing technological breakthroughs, carried by increasingly digitalized and automated economic activities, and the “democratization” of artificial intelligence, heighten fears of massive job destructions and the deepening of social inequalities, to the detriment of downgraded and pauperized middle classes.
For Europe, the strategic consequences of the risks of social and political instabilities linked to the transformation of work are multiple: democratic malaise which intensifies domestic socioeconomic challenges, threat looming over Western political and military alliances (transatlantic relations, European “solidarity”). Above all, current breakthroughs make education and lifelong training high-politics stakes, feeding “updated” power relations between states.
This study has been carried out within the partnership between Capgemini and Ifri.