In the social sciences the term knowledge work defines the group of professions that deal with and deal in knowledge. Most of them are in academia, but there are many other professions like ICT professionals or lawyers that used to shuffle paper who now work all digital. Hence the relatively new addition to the sociological vocabulary is “mobile knowledge work”. We, and yes I am part of this group, can do our job from almost any place with a stable internet connection. Breda Gray et al. (2020, Made to work: Mobilising contemporary worklives.) highlight the importance of gender considerations when we study these new forms of work. Similarly, social class and cultures of more or less trust are thriving for independence. This will play a role in who choses these new forms of work. The digital technology enterprises, media and social media workers are and will be the forerunners of this change. The education sector and academics in general have followed suit.
The issue of autonomy has also received some attention by the authors and this is likely to be a big challenge to standard work relationships as we knew them before the digital turn and the Covid-19 pandemic. The mobile knowledge workers were the first to insist on change of work practices, there will be other professions that will strive for greater autonomy of various kinds.
