Invisibles - Les travailleurs du clic, a documentary series by Henri Poulain

The documentary series Invisibles - Les travailleurs du clic is directed by Henri Poulain, co-founder and producer of StoryCircus. Specialising in documentaries on socio-political subjects, Invisibles focuses on the precarious situation of workers for digital platforms. First broadcast on France Télévision's website - Slash, then on Arte.tv, Invisible is a four-part series devoted to the delivery drivers, moderators and all forms of microworkers working for the American giants Google, Uber and Facebook. Produced by the team from #DataGueule, a data journalism programme that analyses social phenomena through the analysis of numerical data. The programme is based in particular on the work of the digital cultures sociologist Antonio Casilli.

The documentary Invisibles - Les travailleurs du clic lifts the veil on the lives those who work behind the scenes of our smartphones and tablets. It explores their daily existence, framed by absurd contracts that require them to be constantly available for a very unstable income. Their GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon) employers them have become part of our most fundamental habits, often based on the illusion of freedom and flexibility. Bilel, Zlat, Nathalie, Nomena, Amélie, Chris and Edouard live in Lyon, Barcelona, Dublin or Antananarivo: they give us their testimonies with their faces uncovered or concealed, through interviews and role-plays whose sobriety is in stark contrast to their working conditions, with insane work rates for derisory rewards.

Each episode of Invisibles - Les travailleurs du clic opens and closes in the same way, with a parody sequence in which two actors extol the benefits of the start-up nation with empty rhetoric and absurd slogans. The first three episodes focus on several individual destinies, with sober direction that shows the problematic relationship between a harassed, poorly paid and extremely precarious job and a family life that is waning. While their employers use subcontracting and Non Disclosure Agreements to conceal their practices, doing everything possible to avoid their most basic legal responsibilities, these precarious workers try to cope with the difficulty of their daily lives with fatalism or humour.

Invisibles - Les travailleurs du clic is a co-production between major European television channels (Arte, France Télévision, Play Suisse, ZDF) that takes us to the heart of the darkest aspects of globalisation. While the American GAFA manage to easily evade the requirements of French law, and impose their own rules on their deliverymen, drivers and microworkers, they also manage to make international competition work for them. The documentary reveals the lives of several Malagasy workers, graduates and French speakers, who subcontract the customer services of French companies for a few dozen euros per week.