INCA team at the 9th APA Congress
On July 16, INCA members Verna Alcalde and Fabiola Mancinelli of the University of Barcelona made a presentation at the 9th of the Portuguese Anthropological Association (APA) Congress, held in Viana do Castelo (Portugal) from July 14 to 18.
The INCA researchers’ intervention, entitled “Content Moderation and Lifestyle Migration: Ethnographic Insights into Barcelona’s Digital Workforce”, was part of the panel ‘Rooted or Remote: Exploring the Impact of Digitally Mediated Work on Mobility and Belonging’, which aimed to encourage reflection on how changes in the work environment influence people’s perceptions, aspirations and practices related to mobility and immobility across different life stages and contexts.
The paper by Alcalde and Mancinelli presents ethnographic evidence on the experiences of a specific category of digital workers: content moderators. These individuals review and filter user-generated content—text, images, and videos—to remove harmful or violent materials, ensuring compliance with platform guidelines. The job is uniquely challenging, as it can be both extremely monotonous and emotionally taxing due to frequent exposure to graphic and violent content, which can negatively impact workers’ mental health. Drawing on in-depth interviews with workers of various nationalities, INCA researchers illustrate how accepting a potentially harmful and unrewarding, yet relatively well-paid job becomes a strategy for a large cohort of skilled but precarious mobile individuals to achieve lifestyle migration..
Below are some images showcasing INCA’s participation in the congress.
