1-800-Worlds: The Making of the Indian Call Centre Economy

An attempt is made in this paper to understand the different dimensions of the call centre as an emerging workspace. The paper provides a critical narrative of the profile of respondents (N=22), nature of work, work stress and impact on health, earnings, education, work-family interface and the socio-cultural alienation among the workers. It makes use of the respondents' experiences and their reflections on their experiences to understand the various dimensions and impact of work in call centres. The paper concludes that the patterns of work in this sector come close to the work conditions in settings aimed at mass production to meet the demands of forces at a global level with the underlying logic of treating the workers as commodities and to extract the maximum work from them. And these jobs are different from those from conventional work settings in terms of career and skill outcomes.

Journal of Business Communication, 2008

This study examines the processes by which workers in a particular Indian call center located in Kolkata expanded on, negotiated, and chose among an array of possible, especially new, identities and identifications and the ways that these choices affected changing social discourses. Our case study depicted a workplace that was simultaneously casual and urgent, temporal and spatially free and constrained, situated in both Indian and U.S. cultures, and oriented toward business and nightclub ambiances. Within this particular workplace, call center employees (re)constructed and negotiated among an array of discourses that bracketed opportunities for particular identities and identifications. Through these negotiation processes, they (a) engaged in strategic identity(ies) invocations and (b) reframed work, career, and family discourses and practices.

International journal of research in social sciences, 2012

The article traces the coming and growth of Indian call centre industry in the contemporary era of globalization. The major argument posed is that whether the growth of this industry should be

Relatively high wages and the opportunity to be part of an upscale, globalized work environment draw many in India to the call center industry. At the same time, night shift employment presents women, in particular, with new challenges alongside the opportunities. This book explores how beliefs about what constitutes "women's work" are evolving in response to globalization. Working the Night Shift is the first in-depth study of the transnational call center industry that is written from the point of view of women workers. It uncovers how call center employment affects their lives, mainly as it relates to the anxiety that Indian families and Indian society have towards women going out at night, earning a good salary, and being exposed to western culture. This timely account illustrates the ironic and, at times, unsettling experiences of women who enter the spaces and places made accessible through call center work. Visit the author's website at http://www.working-the-nightshift.com/ and facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=106631019373960.

International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2006

This article re-examines some current theoretical trends through which concepts such as diaspora and hybridity have been theorized in cultural studies in the western academy. It argues that these concepts are being rearticulated in new ways in neoliberal globalization, which has implications for rethinking the politics of race and colonialism. Through an analysis of call centers in India, this article theorizes how the cultural politics of Indian call centers, and global flows of information technology, manifest new and emerging frameworks of hybridity and diaspora. Such frameworks point to new relations of race, belonging, and colonialism and unsettle many of the prevailing assumptions through which diaspora and hybridity have been typically understood.

This article explores changing gendered identities of young, unmarried, Indian, middle class women who work in transnational call centres (TNCs) in Bangalore, within the broader context of cultural globalization. While the entry of these organizations has enhanced employment opportunities for the younger population in India, the workplace presents a contested cultural terrain to its female workers, who uphold their traditional class values as an integral part of their modern identities. I portray the richness and depth of the changing aspirations towards individualization, careers and marriage of such women, who migrate from semi-urban areas and become part of a global cultural space. Based on ethnographic research, I suggest that, while these young women frequently frame themselves as dutiful daughters, their attitudes and actions point towards reconfigurations of their identities as modern, professional Indian women, skilled in navigating the altered cultural and economic contexts of their lives in Bangalore.

Language Policy, 2009

This paper offers a dialogic discussion about several issues concerning call centers, including globalizing surges, modernity tropes and educational practices. Based on a critical discourse analysis of a document offering to train west-based entrepreneurs to assume managerial positions in call centers in India, the paper explores ways in which Indian culture and businesses get cast into ''manageable'' items for sale. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the outsourcing phenomenon on language-in-education policies in India, particularly in respect to class and caste differentiation articulated with access to privileged varieties of English through schooling.

I know your head aches; I know you are tired; I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish. Think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language, it's the greatest possession we have.

2014

program in English and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts.

International Journal of Art and Humanity Science (iJAHS); Vol. 1(XX), xxxx, 74-78, 2014

Women in India were always accepted in conventional profiles of nurses, teachers, secretaries or clerks. But today, against this phenomenon a large number of women are joining call centres. In a transnational call centre, work during day time is very rare and typically starts in late evening hours. This comes into contrast with traditional gender roles of women as mother, wife or care taker within the family. Indian society, with all its diversities, remains traditional patriarchal system. As women enter the global labor pool, particularly its nightscape, they experience negative gender based reactions like “what these women are doing in the night?” or “why are they out of their places for so late?” which are generally given to prostitutes or bar dancers. These kinds of reactions or comments provide a context for thinking about women’s access to night shift employment opportunities. Against this background I have made an attempt to study and analyse how does their family relate themselves to their work? How they negotiate their gendered identity and whether call centre industry in context of night shift employment is better suited for women professionals? Thus, it would be useful to look into the new image of women in India “breaking of stereotypes” and working in non-traditional sector of employment.

Organization, 2009

Call centres have been presented as a poster child for many things ranging from a leap in management success, to a locale of total panoptic power, to electronic sweatshops, to the latest effort in deskilling physical and emotional labour for corporate profit, to an outpost of corporate empire. Proponents of these positions frame their assertions with theoretical positions that advance particular views of either ‘nature’ or ‘society’ as the commonsensically-present ‘active ingredient’ behind the forces at play. Aided by actor-network theory, this article attempts to avoid these theoretically-constructed positions to describe how some of the many and varied actors (both human and non-human) contribute to the day-to-day production of call centres and call centre work in and of themselves. Through this analysis, the article demonstrates how artefacts produced in the field itself both help and enable self-discipline of the living in an ongoing reflective accomplishment of order.

Journal of Economic Geography, 2012

The last two decades have seen a profound shift in how labour is spatially conceptualized and understood within economic geography, based on a recognition of workers' abilities to fashion the geography of capitalism to suit their own needs. However, the bulk of work in labour geography fails to examine worker agency beyond a narrow focus on the trade union movement, largely divorces workers' activities from the sphere of social reproduction, and rarely looks beyond the 'core' capitalist economies of the Global North. In response, this article presents findings from a regional labour mobility survey of 439 call centre workers in India's National Capital Region (May 2007). Here, previous work has heavily criticized the 'dead-end' nature of call centre jobs offshored to India from the Global North, yet has done so based on an intra-firm focus of analysis. By taking an alternative cross-firm worker agency approach, our analysis documents for the first time some Indian call centre agents' abilities to circumvent a lack of internal job ladders and achieve career progression through lateral 'career staircases', as they job hop between firms in pursuit of better pay, improved working conditions and more complex job roles. In the absence of widespread unionization within this sector, the article also discusses the productive and social reproductive factors that underpin these patterns of Indian call centre worker agency, and their mediation by a complex nexus of labour market intermediaries beyond the firm. In so doing, the article 'theorizes back' (Yeung, 2007) on 'mainstream' (Western) theories of the limits to call centre worker agency and career advancement.

Cinema Journal, 2009

With their emphasis on digitally mediated performance and illusion, Indiancall centers are an unruly subject for realist modes of documentary. This article rethinksdocumentary practices by comparing documentaries that sustain globalization’s illu-sions of interface and access to the American dream with documentaries that disruptthese illusions.

2014

India is an important Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES) destination and undisputed leader in the world with respect to Call Center industry. Since call center forms an important constituent of ITES, the paper presents a brief account of ITES in therst part while a detailed analysis of economic and social implications and sustainability of call center jobs have been discussed in the latter part. In spite of the hey salary and other service benets in the call center jobs, there exists high rate of attrition in call center industry. �e study aims to understand why the call centers jobs are not sustainable and what may be the probable reasons for it. �e paper is based on the perception of call center employees. For this purpose, the data was generated through aeld survey which was carried out in call centers located in the National Capital Region of Delhi. �e study reveals that the monotonous and stressful nature of work, disruption in social and family life and lack of car...

Sociolinguistic Studies, 2022

Ethnographies of Indian call centers highlight the space of the global call center and its separateness from domestic life. This separateness is manifested in a chronotope (depiction of place, time and personhood) which allows for the coordination of sociolinguistic practices between call center workers and their colleagues, both domestic and international. Learning to speak like a 'professional' is one reason that many people seek work in call centers. For many call center workers this register is learned on the job from colleagues, trainers and managers. Covid-19, a global pandemic which has forced many industries to take adaptive measures in the face of national lockdowns, has led to many workers suddenly working from home. On May 24 th 2020, the Government of India ordered a 21day nationwide lockdown, limiting the movement of over a billion people and forcing call center employees to work from home. Drawing from interviews with call center employees impeded by the lockdown, along with an analysis of metalinguistic commentaries from call center trainers before the lockdown, I propose that call center timespace serves the purpose of coordination of sociolinguistic practices and the enregisterment of professional forms of personhood emblematically linked to an array of speech norms including but not limited to pronunciation, grammatical norms and the phrasing structure of customer service interactions. The newly mediatized formulations of workers in a work-from-home environment result in a clash between the chronotopes of home and office.