Conditional solutionism: How international organizations frame the future of work in middle-income countries

International organizations play an important role in framing the debate about how new technologies transform global labour markets. Merging insights from the recent scholarship on technology and society with academic debates on global social policy, we look at policy reports from international organizations to see how they discuss the debate for middle-income countries. We focus on these countries because they are very much affected by technological change, but often less discussed. Contrasting the reports against discussions of academics and policy experts, we find that the overall tone of these reports tends to be more positive than underlying sources, even if there are discernible multiple differences between organizations. We also find that frames about cash transfers are much more present than discussions about labour standards or the regulation of technology, and important aspects such as workplace surveillance are almost absent. Our findings imply that most international organizations exhibit a conditional solutionist mindset – ‘technological change is good, if . . . ’– thereby excluding important dimensions of the debate. This casts a shadow on how policy responses towards technological disruption in these countries will look like.