Labour Geographies of India's New Services: The Working Lives of Agents in the ITES-BPM Sector

印度新服务的劳动力地理：ITES-BPM 部门代理人的工作生活

• 批准号: ES/T009233/1
• 负责人: Aditya Ray
• 金额: $ 11.15万
• 依托单位: The Open University
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Fellowship
• 财政年份: 2019
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2019 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES%2FT009233%2F1
• 关键词: Labour; Geographies; India; New; Services

Whilst India's 'international-facing' call centre workforce, a key 'voice-based' segment of the IT-enabled services/ Business Process Managmet (ITeS/ BPM) sector, has been the subject of focus in many studies researching the country's growth as the 'world's back-office', not much is known about the workforce that serves the growing appetite for similar services in its domestic market. Indeed, India's diverse and multi-lingual 'domestic-facing' call-centre industry is increasingly providing employment opportunities to young people across new urban-regional geographies, specifically in some of the smaller ('Tier-2 and Tier-3') urban centres. However, there is a general lack of scholarship on this fast-expanding workforce, which is quite unlike the 'English-speaking elite' that dominates employment in the 'transantional' ITeS-BPM economy. This lack of knowledge prevents us from gaining a holistic understanding of new forms of work, labour and livelihoods that are constitutive of growth and development in the fast-changing socio-economic context of India. To address this marked gap in our knowledge and build a more integrative understanding of contemporary transformations in work and labour in developing economies, my PhD research explored different aspects of domestic call centre agents' working-lives in Pune city - a fast-emerging 'Tier-2' metropolis and a ITeS-BPM hub in India. Adopting a qualitative 'ethnographic case-study' approach, my research drew from participant observations, site-visits, and more than 100 in-depth interviews in Pune between November 2015 and October 2016. Based on the combined analysis of the data, my research showed how domestic call centres constituted sites of aspiration for the moderately educated youth from lower-middle class backgrounds, many of whom demonstrated an active espousal of this form of employment and contest mainstream assertions of their overall powerlessness and lack of choice in work or role selection. Second, the research tackled ideas of 'professionalism' in domestic call centres, revealing the different ways in which these notions were transmitted and imbibed during skills-trainings and task-performance on the actual call centre floor. Relying on observations and workers' own narratives, the research here demonstrated how firm-enforced ideas of professionalism 'from above' got regularly challenged and reworked 'from below' by workers. Finally, the research explored the wide diversity in domestic call centre workers' labour market experiences - the 'hyphenated' nature of their employment pathways and the cross-sector career staircases that some workers forged, highlighting the role of workers' own agency in these experiences. Overall, my research findings provided a rich representation of the diversity of ordinary working-life and everyday agency of 'low-end' new services workers in India, highlighting instances when it enables upward social mobility, but also showcased occasions when it got constrained. In doing so my research extended the 'hybrid' (economic/ development) geographies agenda, seeking to at once 'spatialise' and 'humanise' contemporary experiences of precarity and precarious work from the standpoint of under-explored and/or 'out-of-the-way' places in the 'emerging' global South. The ESRC fellowship will seek to build on and extend this research along with enhancing the skills I developed during my PhD, in preparation for an academic career.

虽然印度的“面向国际”的呼叫中心劳动力是IT支持的服务/业务流程管理（ITeS/BPM）部门的关键“基于语音”部分，但在许多研究中，印度作为“世界后台”的增长一直是关注的焦点，但对于国内市场对类似服务日益增长的需求的劳动力知之甚少。事实上，印度多元化和多语言的“面向国内”呼叫中心行业正在为新的城市地区的年轻人提供越来越多的就业机会，特别是在一些较小的（“二线和三线”）城市中心。然而，普遍缺乏对这一快速扩张的劳动力的研究，这与在"transantional" ITeS-BPM经济中主导就业的"讲英语的精英"很不一样。这种知识的缺乏使我们无法全面了解在印度快速变化的社会经济背景下构成增长和发展的新形式的工作、劳动和生计。为了解决我们知识中的这一显著差距，并建立对发展中经济体工作和劳动力当代转型的更全面的理解，我的博士研究探索了浦那市国内呼叫中心代理人工作生活的不同方面-一个快速崛起的"Tier-2"大都会和印度的ITeS-BPM中心。采用定性的“民族志案例研究”方法，我的研究借鉴了参与者的观察，现场访问和2015年11月至2016年10月期间在浦那进行的100多次深入访谈。基于对数据的综合分析，我的研究表明，国内呼叫中心是如何构成来自中下阶层背景的受过中等教育的青年的抱负场所的，他们中的许多人表现出积极拥护这种形式的就业，并质疑他们在工作或角色选择中总体上无能为力和缺乏选择的主流主张。第二，研究解决了国内呼叫中心的“专业”思想，揭示了这些概念在实际呼叫中心楼层的技能培训和任务表现中传播和吸收的不同方式。依靠观察和工人自己的叙述，这里的研究表明，公司强制执行的专业化思想“从上面”经常受到工人“从下面”的挑战和修改。最后，该研究探讨了国内呼叫中心工作人员劳动力市场经历的广泛多样性--他们就业途径的“连字符”性质以及一些工作人员建立的跨部门职业阶梯，强调了工作人员自己的代理在这些经历中的作用。总的来说，我的研究结果提供了印度“低端”新服务工作者的普通工作生活和日常代理的多样性的丰富代表性，突出了它使社会向上流动的情况，但也展示了它受到限制的情况。在这样做的过程中，我的研究扩展了“混合”（经济/发展）地理议程，寻求在一次“空间化”和“人性化”当代经验的不稳定性和不稳定的工作，从未开发和/或“出的方式”的地方在“新兴”全球南部的立场。ESRC奖学金将寻求建立和扩展这项研究，沿着提高我在博士期间开发的技能，为学术生涯做准备。

项目成果

Judith Bessant, The Great Transformation: History for a Techno-Human Future

朱迪思·贝桑特，《伟大的变革：科技人类未来的历史》

• DOI: 10.1177/1024529420905276
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Competition & Change
• 影响因子: 3.9
• 作者: Ray A

Professionalism as Skill: The Social Construction of Worker Identity in India's New Services

专业精神作为技能：印度新服务中工人身份的社会建构

• 期刊: Third World Quarterly
• 影响因子: 2
• 作者: Ray A

Coping with crisis and precarity in the gig economy: 'Digitally organised informality', migration and socio-spatial networks among platform drivers in India

应对零工经济中的危机和不稳定：印度平台驱动者中的“数字化组织的非正规性”、移民和社会空间网络

• DOI: 10.1177/0308518x231220296
• 发表时间: 2024
• 期刊: Economy and Space
• 作者: Ray A

Book Review: Enda Brophy, Language Put to Work: The Making of the Global Call Centre Workforce

书评：Enda Brophy，《语言投入工作：全球呼叫中心劳动力的打造》

• DOI: 10.1177/0950017020913226
• 发表时间: 2020
• 期刊: Work, Employment and Society
• 作者: Ray A

Professionalism as a soft skill: the social construction of worker identity in India's new services economy

专业精神作为软技能：印度新服务经济中工人身份的社会建构

• DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2023.2223133
• 发表时间: 2023
• 期刊: Third World Quarterly
• 影响因子: 2
• 作者: Ray A