The discursive construction of the future of work: critical analysis of white papers and prospective reports

Abstract

 This article discusses the future of work as a communicational phenomenon, through its analysis as a discursive construction. We selected two reports, two forward-looking documents as object: one signed by the World Economic Forum — perhaps the greatest representative voice of global capitalism — and another by Dell Technologies, an exponent of the world digital economy. We seek to identify how these discourses about the future of work mobilize hegemonic codes of neoliberalism, understood as social logic. This logic presupposes the production of subjects, through skills, profiles, as human capital to be managed effectively. The methodology is based on Angenot’s notion of social discourse — which proposes an analysis of the spirit of time in its dissemination in discourses of a given historical and social context.