Artificial intelligence, emotional labor, and the quest for sociological and political imagination among low-skilled workers

This study examines how generative AI impacts low-skilled workers in their daily professional lives, how it changes the nature of their work, and what, if any, strategies they develop to cope with this new reality. Emphasis is placed on call center agents—an occupational group facing a particularly high automation risk. Drawing on Constructivist Grounded Theory and semistructured interviews in an Austrian call center, we uncover how flawed generative AI tools have increased emotional labor among these workers. This increase is hypothesized to result in agents’ inability to embed their own problems in the larger social context of generative AI’s impact on the labor market, let alone to politicize these problems. They were thus said to lack sociological and political imagination. Our study is the first to link emotional labor with these forms of imagination among low-skilled workers, offering new analytical tools for future research on generative AI’s nuanced effects on the labor market. To empower low-skilled workers, foster their imaginations and address their concerns, we propose several policy recommendations, including targeted education campaigns, enhanced social dialogue, co-determination rights, and tailored upskilling programs. This study thus offers a valuable contribution to scientific research while providing practical implications for policymakers.