'The plan is just survival': Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment

Paper Title

"The plan is just survival": Data Work in Kenya and the Regime of Entrapment

Publication Info

• Topic area: Labor conditions in AI supply chains and their systemic exploitation.
• Keywords: AI supply chain, data work, precarity, neoliberal governmentality, labor exploitation, Kenya, global labor arbitrage, supply chain capitalism, worker organizing, platform-mediated labor.

Background and Problem

• Problem / challenge: The AI industry relies on exploitative global labor practices, particularly in data work, where workers face precarious contracts, low wages, and systemic barriers to mobility. Prior research has not fully addressed the mechanisms that entrap workers in these roles.
• Significance: Understanding these exploitative conditions is crucial for addressing labor injustices and supporting worker mobilization within the AI supply chain, which underpins the industry's development.
• Motivation and related work: Previous studies have documented the exploitative conditions of platform-mediated labor and AI supply chains, focusing on precarity and algorithmic management. However, the structural mechanisms that sustain these conditions remain underexplored, particularly in the Global South.

Solution

• Proposed approach: Conceptualization of the "regime of entrapment" to analyze the structural mechanisms that bind Kenyan data workers to exploitative roles within the AI supply chain.
• Novelty:
  1. Identification of six mechanisms constituting the regime of entrapment, including upfront investment, normalized under-employment, precarious contracts, regulatory capture, global labor arbitrage, and illusions of mobility.
  2. Integration of neoliberal governmentality and supply chain capitalism frameworks to explain how these mechanisms operate across multiple scales.
  3. Documentation of Kenyan data workers' lived experiences and their implications for labor organizing.
  4. Proposal for reorienting research toward prefigurative politics to support worker-led initiatives and transnational solidarities.
• Procedure and key techniques:
  • Semi-structured interviews with 18 Kenyan data workers, focusing on their labor conditions, experiences, and aspirations.
  • Thematic analysis using constructivist grounded theory to identify structural mechanisms and patterns of entrapment.
  • Member-checking to ensure findings align with workers' perspectives.

Results

• Concrete findings:
  • Workers face upfront investments (e.g., equipment costs, unpaid training) that lock them into participation.
  • Chronic under-employment leads to cycles of debt and stagnating or declining wages.
  • Precarious contracts and waiting queues create job insecurity and limit workers' autonomy.
  • Regulatory capture enables companies to exploit legal and economic conditions, while state institutions prioritize attracting investment over labor protections.
  • Global labor arbitrage perpetuates extreme wage disparities and fractures transnational worker solidarities.
  • Illusions of mobility sustain workers' engagement while foreclosing alternative career paths.
• Advantage over baselines: The study provides a detailed conceptual framework ("regime of entrapment") and highlights systemic mechanisms that constrain worker mobilization, extending prior research on precarity and platform labor.
• Experiments / evaluation:
  • Interviews with 18 Kenyan data workers (9 women, 9 men) across urban regions such as Nairobi, Juja, and Machakos.
  • Participants had varying work arrangements (platform-only, BPO-only, or both) and experience across multiple data modalities (image, video, text, audio, LIDAR).
  • Analysis revealed consistent patterns of exploitation and entrapment across diverse contexts.
• Limitations and future work:
  • Gender-specific impacts of exploitation were not analyzed in depth.
  • The study does not address whether the regime of entrapment is deliberately orchestrated or emergent.
  • Future research could explore corporate decision-making and contradictions in neoliberal governmentality within Kenya.

Summary

This paper examines the exploitative labor conditions faced by Kenyan data workers within the global AI supply chain, conceptualized as a "regime of entrapment." Through interviews with 18 workers, the study identifies six mechanisms that bind workers to precarious roles, including upfront investments, wage stagnation, insecure contracts, regulatory capture, global labor arbitrage, and illusions of mobility. Using frameworks of neoliberal governmentality and supply chain capitalism, the paper explains why labor mobilization remains constrained. It calls for reorienting research toward prefigurative politics to support worker-led initiatives and transnational solidarities, emphasizing the need for structural change in the AI industry.