I. Work and upward mobility?

A. Constable: FDWs in Hong Kong experience cruel optimism, rather than upward mobility
B. Hoang: sex workers in Ho Chi Minh City can experience upward mobility, independence, supportive work environment
C. Reena Patel, Working the Night Shift: Women in India's Call Center Industry (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010)

1. Temporal mobility: women work at night in call centers
2. Spatial mobility: migrate through urban space
3. Mobility = urban spatio-temporality

D. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

1. Jobs have moved to workers
2. BPO in India employs 740,000 people
3. Shifts: 10pm-6am or 8pm-4am
4. Mumbai: population of 12 million, 2001

 

II. Contrasting images of call center work

A. Upwardly mobile young women "housekeepers to the world," India Today
B. Pratibha Srikanth Murthy, a 24-year-old employee of Hewlett Packard, raped and murdered on her way to a call center job in Bangalore
C. Three research questions

1. How does demand for nightshift workers recodify women's spatial and temporal mobility? How does call center work translate into social and economic mobility?
2. What spatial and temporal barriers does this work pose for women?
3. Do women call center workers face a trade off in which their higher incomes and educational levels produce increased surveillance?

D. Space: temporality, gender, transgression

1. Mumbai as woman friendly city
2. Lack of public toilets

E. Public/Private distinction

1. Is work outside the home liberating?
2. US, 1960s-1970s: white, middle-class feminism promoted work outside the home
3. India: Call center work as income, freedom to be out of the house
4. Global context of low wage service work
5. Feminization of economic sectors: white collar becomes pink collar

F. Bodily control/surveillance

1. Women's bodies are "sites on which family honor, religious piety, and national identity are performed" (25)
2. "Hooker shift": Women who are out at night are at risk and risky (25)

G. Methods

1. 2006, ten months
2. Interviewed 72 call center employees, 9 of them men, plus managers and family members
3. 4 focus groups
4. Participant observation at two call centers, customer service for credit card companies, telephone, electronics, and airlines
5. Starting salaries ranged from $222-310 per month
6. Employees primarily in early 20s, half are men, Patel focuses on women

 

III. Outsourcing Customer Service

A. US tightens visa regulations in 2000
B. Supposed to protect US workers
C. Outcome: outsource service jobs to countries with lower wages, educated and English speaking workers

 

IV. Transportation and Surveillance

A. Women are not supposed to move across city at night
B. Factories Act of 1948

1. Women cannot work between 7pm and 6am
2. 2005: amended to permit night work when there are provisions for women's dignity, honor, and safety (50).

C. Call centers covered by laws regulating shops and establishments
D. Transportation services: door-to-door and central point
E. Pratibha Srikanth Murthy's rape and murder, 2005

1. Perpetrator posed as transport provider
2. Som Mittal, president of NASSCOM, former managing director of HP Global Soft, charged with not providing for female night shift workers' safety

F. One murder vs. 300 women working in maquiladoras in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico killed: CLASS

1. Middle-class office jobs supposed to be safe
2. BPO represents India's emergence as modern, developed economy

G. Tight control

1. Two hours to go two kilometers
2. Self-surveillance to protect honor from "the hooker shift"
3. Society protects middle-class women if they know their place (82).

 

V. Economic and Social Mobility

A. Economic mobility

1. Good income, investment capital for a business, purchase or rental of a house or apartment, increased individual consumption
2. Family support, limited time for consumption

B. Social mobility

1. Household labor demands
2. Families expect women to be home at night
3. Bad marriage partners: seen as lazy, low-skilled, easy money

C. "Whether they work in customer service, garment production, or nursing, when women go against convention, their behavior is met with anxiety, even if the work they do is construed as 'ladies work'" (139).
D. Global capital is hypermobile, labor is not
E. Significance of the hooker shift: "The media frenzy surrounding the Bangalore rape case not only made apparent the disparate attention given to women's safety in relation to their class status, but also demonstrates how women's bodies are used to convey Indian nationalist anxiety related to economic development and globalization" (148).

 

VI. What is call center work actually like?

A. Physical, mental, or emotional toll? Opportunities for friendships and fun
B. Padios: "Indeed, call center workers must contend with callers' demands--often delivered with irritation and insults--as well as management's panoptic measures of their productivity" (39).
C. Distorted economic growth: little investment in agricultural productivity, call center workers earn more than CPAs or college professors
D. Bombay Calling

 

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