Naim Bin Hasan

This study aims to examine the daily lives of Bangladeshi freelancers in availing and navigating the opportunities and challenges of platform-mediated work, examining how the experiences are enmeshed in their integration into global value chains (GVCs). According to the World Systems Theory, neoliberalism critique, Labor Process Theory, and Precariat Theory, this study analyzes the dual character of freelancing as an avenue of economic empowerment—through income generation and skill accumulation—and a site of precarity defined by unpredictable income, algorithmic control, and lack of social safeguards.

Through in-depth semi-structured interviews of 30 freelancers backed up with secondary quantitative data, the research makes use of thematic analysis to illuminate subjective experience, mundane practice, and social impact of freelancing. Critical questions address financial security, work-life balance, platform regulation, and participation in international markets, revealing how freelancers' experience reflects broader trends of globalization and work within peripheral economies. By centering workers' voices, this study contributes to sociological debates regarding digital labor, informs just labor policy, and sheds light on Bangladesh's evolving role within the global digital economy.

Drawing on thirty in-depth qualitative interviews, it illustrates that AI is viewed as both a tool for advancement and a threat to survival. Programmers and technically skilled professionals view AI as an assistant that increases efficiency and speed. By contrast, novice and creative workers view AI as a risk that shrinks job opportunities and compensation. These paradoxical perspectives suggest that economic insecurity, skill, and cultural expectations reconstruct the meaning of technological transformation.

The study advances a “survival vs. transition” framework to explain these differences. In developed economies, AI-driven change is more of a guided transition supported by institutions. In the Global South, in contrast, it plays out as survival of the individual under conditions of precarity. In linking workers’ daily lives to global labor inequalities, the study expands Labor Process Theory and examines how AI redistributes value and control. For Bangladesh, where the digital economy is a pillar of its economic growth, sustainable digital development in the AI era requires institutional support that transforms adaptation from an individualized process to a collective transition.

Historically a search for academic opportunity, Bangladeshi international student migration is presently driven by a hybrid motivation: education and political escape. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study conducts a survey of 70 Bangladeshi students at various stages in the U.S. migration process, comparing quantitative data and open-ended narratives. Students are increasingly viewing foreign higher education as a legitimate safety valve and a basis for sustained transnational political mobilization.

The findings reflect a shift in the migration studies landscape, whereby student mobility constitutes self-survival and activism. The study ends with a discussion of implications for migration theory, the political future of Bangladesh, and institutional support systems for American universities.

In this study, the emotional responses of users interacting with AI-driven virtual assistants and human agents in service support interactions are compared. A quantitative cross-sectional survey of 150 U.S. adults who had used both human and AI assistants within the past three months was conducted. The findings show that human agents elicit more positive affect, with higher ratings for satisfaction, emotional support, and feeling understood. On the other hand, AI assistants were rated as improved problem-solvers, although interactions with human agents were associated with higher anxiety.

In contrast with the efficiency of AI, users indicated a greater affinity for subsequent human interactions. All reported differences were statistically significant (p < .05). Sociologically interpreted through symbolic interactionism and affect theory, the findings show that users value affective connection more than utilitarian success. The study concludes that AI cannot directly substitute the nuanced affective connection provided by humans, with a call for the creation of emotionally intelligent hybrid models that combine the strengths of AI and human agents.