Scholars Award: A Study of Rural and Prison Sourcing of Information and Communication Technology Labor

本项目在印度进行实地考察，考察信息通信技术（ICT）劳动力从城市中心向乡村、贫困社区和监狱的转移。 PI将在四个邦的农村单位RuralShores对工人进行100次采访，她将在安得拉邦的Cherlapalli监狱进行人种学观察，这是印度第一个此类全球外包中心。这个项目的目标是揭示这种转变的社会影响，这是远远不清楚。一方面，印度公司能够为传统上被排除在技术就业之外的群体提供就业机会。另一方面，这些工作的工资远低于城市地区的ICT外包工作，也不太可能受到国家劳动法规的保护或由工会代表。三个因素将成为决定这一转变可行性的焦点：将技术技能转移给边缘工人，为社会流动性提供支持，以及在此过程中维护数据安全。研究结果将对扶贫政策讨论、农村和女性工作者在STEM职业中的代表性以及数据犯罪和网络安全的国际监管产生更广泛的影响。 技术总结在理论层面，该项目将用于评判科学技术研究中关于ICT对全球南方边缘化工人意味着什么的相互竞争的概念。如果确认现代化理论的命题，就可以表明，将信通技术劳动力分包到印度的村庄等地，确实为农村贫困人口提供了通过技术培训摆脱贫困的流动途径。 另一方面，后殖民计算框架的积极结果表明，信息和通信技术劳动力的分包实际上并不代表一个可行的长期就业平台，而是在村庄中重新隔离穷人;因此，巩固了数字鸿沟沿着地理界限。 此外，关于数据安全的调查结果将表明这些农村和监狱业务外包处理器对信息系统构成了什么样的威胁，以及围绕这些工人的刻板印象是否得到证据的支持。

General Audience Summary This project engages in on-site field work in India to examine the shift in the labor force for information and communication technology (ICT) from urban centers to rural villages, poor communities, and prisons. The PI will conduct 100 interviews with workers at a rural unit, RuralShores, in four states, and she will engage in ethnographic observations at a prison, Cherlapalli Jail in Andhra Pradesh, which is the home to India's first global outsourcing center of this kind. The goal of this project is to shed light on the societal implications of this shift, which are far from clear. On the one hand, Indian firms are able to offer job opportunities to groups that have been traditionally excluded from technologically-based employment. On the other, these jobs pay wages far less than ICT outsourcing jobs in urban areas, and are less likely to be protected by state labor regulations or represented by unions. Three factors will be the focus for determining the viability of this shift: transferring technical skills to marginal workers, providing supports for social mobility, and upholding data security in the process. Results will have broader impacts on policy discussions of poverty alleviation, representations of rural and female workers in STEM occupations, and international regulation of data crimes and cyber security. Technical Summary At the theoretical level, this project will serve to adjudicate between competing notions within Science and Technology Studies of what ICT means for marginalized workers in the global south. Affirmation of propositions from modernization theory would indicate that sub-sourcing of ICT labor to places like villages in India has indeed provided mobility avenues out of poverty for the rural poor through technical training. Alternatively, positive results for a post-colonial computing framework would suggest that sub-sourcing of ICT labor does not in fact represent a viable platform for long-term employment, but instead a re-segregation of the poor in villages; hence, solidifying the digital divide along geographic lines. In addition, findings on data security will indicate what kinds of threats these rural and prison business outsource processors pose to information systems, and whether the stereotypes surrounding these workers as unsafe are upheld by the evidence.