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Introduction 1. A salwar kameez is a traditional North Indian form of dress, which consists of loose pajama-style pants and a long, flowing top that goes down to midthigh or even the knees. It is often worn with a dupatta, a long, broad scarf. 2. Outsourcing practices are neither unique nor new to transnational flows of capital and production. The outsourcing practices that we consider here are just one part of this continuing trend. Ross (2009) traces historical and contemporary migration of capital and labor across the globe. He notes that while in uneven power relations, both capital and labor move in response to opportunities. Corporations seek increasing profits and move across the globe to facilitate them while simultaneously relying on a controllable workforce. Although historically workers have shifted their living practices to coincide with the location of labor in order to stabilize their long-term work efforts, in the contemporary moment, what we see is a “new geography of livelihoods” wherein workers increasingly define themselves as more flexible and mobile (3). This involves the potential to move across industries and companies as well as location. We see this phenomenon in the call center industry as the industry moving to India and workers’ movement in the industry seeking higher wages, contributing to accelerated attrition rates. 3. This study builds on previous studies of the transnational migration of workers that relies heavily on Indian labor. Xiang’s (2006) study of the “body shopping” industry describes the ways in which multinational corporations set up shop in places like Australia and the United Kingdom and employ and bring in Indian workers in shortto long-term employment in the technology industry. Workers themselves are transported back and forth from India to the job site, while some seek permanent residency. Xiang considers the interconnections of transnational labor and migration with cultural practices and standing. Though the work is difficult, workers do enjoy social and transnational mobility through their placement in the industry. Xiang’s study highlights the significant changes and mobility that this industry practice affords some Notes 197 198 notes to introduction workers, but the call center industry is different in important ways. In this industry, the agents remain within India and within the industry process that moves across borders . Further, whereas in other industries workers provide back-office support, in the call center industry, there is direct communication between agents and consumers. Our consideration is to look into the experiences of agents when the conditions of their labor bring them into direct communication with other nations while physically remaining in their own. 4. Aneesh (2006) describes virtual migration as the processes of multinational corporations that transfer information across high-speed connections that connect workers in one country with consumers in another without direct physical contact and simultaneously circumventing immigrant policy and practice. However, he argues, “Workers based in India may be governed by local practices, including labor and tax laws, yet like traditional immigrant workers, they do cross national boundaries and directly occupy some employment space in sectors of American economy. In short, they migrate without migration” (2). 5. Upadhya and Vasavi (2008) argue that the I.T. industry has reconstituted the terrain of workers’ lives. Information technology, they argue, recasts the workforce in Bangalore through the creation of the I.T. workforce, as well as the new forms of labor, employment, and management it enables. As a result of these significant shifts, their participation in the industry redefines the workers’ lifestyle, identities, and sociality. The idea of the worker transforms from previous incarnations of Indian labor to a model of flexibility, mobility, and reinvention of self. The unpredictability of the industry demands this kind of flexibility: workers must continually reinvent themselves to adapt to the rapidly shifting needs of the industry. Upadhya and Vasavi’s study reveals that because this industry so dramatically shifts workers’ lives, it produces a sense of separation from family and friends—a loss of the traditional model of the extended family, reconstituted through this labor as child-care providers. The construction of their identities as workers generates a sense of nostalgia for their previous lives. Although their compelling study insightfully reveals the deeply transformative nature of I.T. labor, our development of virtual migration departs from theirs, both in terms of the depth with which the call center agents of our study are fully immersed in and transformed by this migration and in terms of the point of global contact (the United States as opposed to...

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