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Borders in Service

Borders in Service

Enactments of Nationhood in Transnational Call Centres

by Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred Poster

Published by: University of Toronto Press

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Digital download
9781487511852
Published: September 2016

Digital download
9781487511869
Published: October 2016

Description
Contents
Authors

Borders in Service traces the intersection of service labour and national identity across global call centres in seven countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Mauritius, Morocco, the Philippines, and the US-Mexico border. While most studies on offshore call centres have focused on India this collection explores the experiences of call center workers in many of the newly emerging hubs of transnational service work.

In this collection, Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred Poster have gathered a wide range of contributors to explore the dynamics within global call centres. Such dynamics include: language, speech, accent issues, expressions of consumer sentiment, physical space, and organizational, human resource, and labour policies. By grounding the theoretical debates on nationhood and labour in the realities of daily life in global call centres, Mirchandani and Poster have created a timely, accessible and revealing collection that will change what we know about offshored customer service work.

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1
Enactments of Nationhood in Transnational Call Centers
Winifred R. Poster and Kiran Mirchandani

Part I: Call Centers as Building Blocks for Narratives of the Nation-State

Chapter 2
“El Salvador Works”: The Creation and Negotiation of a National Brand and the Transnational Imaginary
Cecilia M. Rivas

Chapter 3: Growing Downhill? Contestations of Sovereignty and the Creation of Itinerant Workers in Guyanese Call Centers
Alissa Trotz, Kiran Mirchandani, and Iman Khan

Chapter 4
‘An Island Off the West Coast of Australia:’ Multiplex Geography and the Growth of Transnational Tele-Mediated Service Work in Mauritius
Chris Benner and Jairus Rossi

Part II: Constructing Nationally-Appropriate (and In-Appropriate) Workers

Chapter 5
We Serve the World: Everyday Nationalism and English in the Philippine Offshore Call Centers
Aileen O. Salonga

Chapter 6
Transnational Homies and The Urban Middle Class: Enactments of Class, Nation, and Modernity in Guatemalan Call Centers
Luis Pedro Meoño Artiga

Part III: Caught in the Middle: Labors of Borders and Crossings

Chapter 7
Migrations a L’Envers: Global Service work and Discursive Crossings
Sanae Elmoudden

Chapter 8
Border Speech Between Two National Linguistic Ideologies: The Case of Bilingual El Paso Call Centers
Josiah Heyman and Amado Alarcón

Summary

Chapter 9
Conclusions: Borders in Service
Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred R. Poster

List of Contributors

Kiran Mirchandani is at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.

Winifred Poster is at Washington University in St. Louis.