Lives on the Line: How the Philippines became the World's Call Center Capital

The call center industry is booming in the Philippines. Around the year 2005, the country overtook India as the world's "voice capital," and industry revenues are now the second largest contributor to national GDP. In Lives on the Line, Jeffrey J. Sallaz retraces the assemblage of a global market for voice over the past two decades. Drawing upon case studies of sixty Filipino call center workers and two years of fieldwork in Manila, he illustrates how offshore call center jobs represent a m...