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调研，考察从事信息通信技术（ICT）工作的劳动力从城市中心向农村、贫困社区和监狱的转移。PI将在四个邦的农村单位RuralShores对100名工人进行采访，她将在安得拉邦的Cherlapalli监狱进行人种学观察，该监狱是印度首个此类全球外包中心的所在地。这个项目的目标是揭示这种转变的社会影响，这一点尚不清楚。一方面，印度公司能够为传统上被排除在技术型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，而且不太可能受到国家劳动法规的保护，也不太可能得到工会的代表。决定这种转变可行性的三个因素将是重点：向边缘工人转移技术技能，为社会流动提供支持，并在此过程中维护数据安全。研究结果将对减贫政策讨论、STEM职业中农村和女性工人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。在理论层面，该项目将有助于在科学和技术研究中关于信息通信技术对全球南方边缘化工人意味着什么的相互竞争的概念之间进行裁决。对现代化理论命题的肯定将表明，将信息通信技术劳动力分包到印度农村等地，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。或者，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长期就业的可行平台，而是重新隔离了村庄中的穷人；因此，数字鸿沟沿着地理界线不断固化。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者对信息系统构成何种威胁，以及围绕这些工人不安全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.