The event will be hybrid with the option to attend in person at the Department of Social Policy & Intervention, Barnett House, 32 Wellington Square, Oxford OX1 2ER. The event will also be live-streamed via Zoom. Registration closes at 14.00 on the day of the seminar. If you are registering to join online, a Zoom link will be sent prior to the event.

Dr Aina Gallego is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the Universitat de Barcelona, a research associate at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI) and holds an ICREA Academia research intensification award (2022-2027). Dr Gallego will be discussing 'Do workers demand protection from digital transformations at work? Evidence from five European countries'.

Do citizens demand protection for workers in risk of being displaced by technology? While labour market risks related to technological change have been common in the last centuries, debate about the implications of labour market upheaval created by disruptive technologies has intensified in recent years due to the intensification of digitalisation and the use of AI. In this joint paper with Alexander Kuo (University of Oxford), Aina Gallego will present new survey data from 5 EU countries to examine if citizens support a wide suite of policies to regulate contemporary technological change in the workplace, including technological ‘protectionist’ policies to slow down technological change. These include policies that are infrequently asked about in the literature, such as empowering workers to control the rate of technological adoption and taxing companies that technologically replace workers by algorithms, among others. They examine whether informing individuals of the redistributive and socio-tropic consequences of such policies affects their support, and whether technological risks condition such support. It is found that a non-negligible minority of citizens supports policies that can shelter workers from technological disruption at the workplace, but that egotropic arguments reduce support for such policies, while arguments about the distributive consequences of policies have little impact on public opinion.

This seminar is convened by Dr Tim Vlandas and will be followed by a Q&A.