Answer the Call: Virtual Migration in Indian Call Centers

by Aimee Carrillo Rowe, Sheena Malhotra, Kimberlee Pérez

Overview

Drawing from interviews with agents, trainers, managers, and CEOs at call centers in Bangalore and Mumbai, Answer the Call shows that workers in call centers are not quite in India or America but rather in a state of “virtual migration.” Encouraged to steep themselves in American culture, the agents come to internalize and perform Americanness for Americans—and each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452940397
Publisher:	University of Minnesota Press
Publication date:	12/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	280
File size:	536 KB

About the Author

Aimee Carrillo Rowe is associate professor of communication studies at California State University, Northridge.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface: On the Ground
Acknowledgments

Introduction: Answering the Call
1. The Rhythm of Ambition: Power Temporalities and the Production of the Call Center Agent in U.S. Popular Culture
2. “I Used to Call Myself ‘Elvis’”: Suspended Mobilities in Indian Call Centers
3. “I Interact with People from All Over the World”: The Politics of Virtual Citizenship
4. “I’m Going to Sing It the Way Eminem Sings It”: India’s Network Geography
Conclusion: Returning the Call

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"Answer the Call takes on the investigation of call centers in India and uses that case study to help us to theorize, in more supple and nuanced ways, the multiple shifts in consciousness and social imaginaries that contemporary globalizing forces enable."—Jane Desmond, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

"This engagingly written book is an innovative analysis of the work that is done in call centers in India. The authors offer a careful academic examination of the time-virtual space issues connected to workers at these centers by asking readers to think about call-center work as a form of migration. The book draws on a number of disparate academic areas, demonstrating the strengths and necessity of interdisciplinary thinking in the social sciences. Readers will never think about call centers in the same way again."—Kum-Kum Bhavnani, University of California, Santa Barbara

"A very relevant and timely work that addresses the issues of inclusion and exclusion in relation to globalization."—CHOICE

"The persistence of call centers and India’s active participation in the global market make Answer the Call highly relevant for understanding of these communities."—Oral History Review

"An important inquiry into how conceptions of national identity, the nation-state, and the borders between them are still present and defended in a globalized context."—Pacific Affairs

From the Publisher