The Indian call center experience: a case study in changing discourses of identity, identification, and career in a global context.

Workers invoked different identities strategically as they accounted for the particularities of their work (i.e., their temporal and spatial locations in their work; see Kuhn, 2006). With their different names and momentary disconnections to the home culture, they exemplified global-local, multicultural, and fake-real or public-private self-conflicts in which identity and emotional performances could be bought and sold as commodities (S. Tracy & Trethewey, 2005). Pritha's anguish over what she called her "identity crisis" lay in her perception that she faked her genuine self by adopting different identities and cultures. This sort of emotional labor reinforced call center workers' struggles with their complex identity negotiations in ways that differed from depictions of domestic call center and similar employees' experiences (Shuler & Sypher, 2000; K. Tracy & S. Tracy, 1998) in that their struggles brought to the fore the challenges that the "production of new spatialities and temporalities" are posing for transnational workers (Sassen, 2000b, p. 215).

(Re)framed Work, Career, and Family Discourses and Practice

Kuhn (2006) noted that discursive resources can be viewed as

the nodes at which identity work and identity regulation meet ...

it is the overarching vision of the organizational self each

assemblage of discourses conveys that provides greater or fewer

options for self-creation. In other words, it is not merely one's

occupation, the nature of work, or managerial tactics that

encourage particular forms of identity regulation or present

opportunities for resistance, but is instead a complex amalgam of

contextualized discursive practices, occupational selves, and

locale-specific discourses. (p. 1354)

Just as workers' identities shifted and evolved in diverse ways, so too did their language for and their practices of work, career, and family (Buzzanell & Goldzwig, 1991). Kolkata Call Center workers' talk and actions revealed the new realities or discursive resources on which they could construct their identities. These locale-specific discourses centered on (a) economics, (b) employment as work versus career, and (c) privileging of emergent or new social, familial, and cultural identifications. Some participants perceived these changes as positive, whereas others expressed concern about their own and others' future personal, relational, and cultural experiences.

Economic Discourses

Call center employees' discourse and reported practices depicted a changing cultural order--one centered on economics redefining certain sociocultural standards and norms. So great have been economic changes in terms of high wages and expectations that some companies in India are trying to tame wages (Thibodeau, 2006). Not surprisingly, then, economic discourse pervaded participants' focus group comments in ways that established new visions of life that the participants had begun to perceive as ideal. In other words, their talk established changing interpretive repertoires for evaluating their work and family conditions and short--and long-term decision making. For instance, workers (re)defined their orientation to money and values:

Amit: I don't think the pay is high enough for you to support a growing family.

Rahul: The pay is good in terms of pocket money ... 10,000 bucks in hand ... we do not have to support family ... all we do is shopping and eating out ... having fun ... that's a lot when it's just pocket money ... but it's peanuts otherwise.

Mita: Ya, not for running a family.

In this exchange, workers perceived that "10,000 bucks" per month (approximately $200), which is still the monthly income for a large section of single-earning middle-class Indians in Kolkata, was not enough to support a family. Call center employees can earn $3,000 to $5,000 a year, in a nation where the per capita income is less than $500 (CBS, 2004). This conversation captured the transformation of the urban middle class in India in ways that were consistent with televised reports. Media images of urban middle classes shape a new India for their members by positioning a series of commodities as valuable and upholding new meanings associated with these commodities (Fernandes, 2000). Participants' comments displayed the extent to which they considered their workplace (and class) identities and statuses as commensurate with new economic and cultural visions. The call center job gave them access to the commodities for which they aspired at an early age, and it established a springboard for even higher future aspirations and living standards. As a result, the call center became a site in which they negotiated the new monetary benchmark for their survival and for their current or future career success.

Chitra: The more money you have, the more money you want to spend. You get more temptations.

Akash: Ya, the more comfortable your life gets ...

Kumar: You want to spend money and want to be seen. Go to a disco, restaurants.

The workers expressed euphoria over their economic freedom and the luxuries that this freedom brought. Most employees were pursuing their education while working, a new phenomenon in middle-class India, where the regular practice was to finish education before taking a job. Hence, the new material experiences for the youth spells a different cultural, social, and economic discursive resource that begins to redefine standards of what counts as ideal. As such, call center workers introduced different cultural politics into the cosmopolitan urban middle class.

Career Discourses

The employees' economic orientation, combined with their life and career stages, offered them different ways of labeling their call center employment. As a younger worker, Anjan perceived the center to be a "phase between education and venturing out into a full-fledged career." For him, it was a transition (i.e., a job) and not a career or lifelong sequence of work-related experiences (Arthur, Hall, & Lawrence, 1989; Hall, 2002). Comments such as these emerged throughout Kolkata Call Center talk and were consistent with Deb's remarks:

I do not think it's something everyone thinks of as a lifetime

career. We all start off as college kids, you know, who need a bit

of pocket money ... you work for two [or] three years and then you

want to do something as [sic] really professional ... something

creative. I wouldn't treat this as a career per se. As far as the

pay is concerned, it's not something you would want to stick to

after you are 25 and probably 30, when you have a growing family. I

wouldn't think of this as a career.

Most participants expressed agreement with Deb's assessments. The money they earned was useful in the present, hut other dynamics were emerging for their future. If the call center was providing them "10,000 bucks" when they were 21 years of age and pursuing college, then their future became one of great promise. If the call center, despite being only a "stopgap," as they liked to call it, could provide the alluring trappings of modern India (e.g., "discos," "frequent eating out," "buying expensive clothes," and "fancy mobile phones"), then their future had the potential to become one of material and social status fulfillment. In these ways, the younger workers appeared to identify less with the discourses of their call center locale than with their fun lifestyle and imagined future identities and practices.

This anticipation of most of the younger workers contrasted sharply with the views of their older colleagues who considered call center work to be career developmental. Rabin, aged 48 years, said that he had 27 years of sales experience. He began work at the call center 2.5 years ago because he had "the opportunity to work with people," which he enjoyed. Gautam, who was in his mid-40s, portrayed himself as "an old man for this industry" with "huge experience in marketing," who joined the call center a year ago because he "wanted to do sedentary work:" "I thought this would be a new kind of vocation. For me, it was quite a challenge that I took up." Through these remarks, both Rabin and Gautam indicated that they regarded the call center industry as a career site (and source of career satisfaction) unlike their young coworkers. For the younger employees, the excitement of having "pocket money" and "some work experience" was what fueled their participation.

Social Discourses

The pull toward a different economic and employment order with distinct life stage differences also was reflected in workers' discourse and feelings about social, familial, and cultural changes in their lives. For the young, the call center cultural narrative was one of exuberance and seduction (by the appeals of and sensory displays within the nightclub-like workplace atmosphere and in work get-togethers). Deb said:

I think every hour is happy for us. It is unbelievably youthful and

lively out here. It is so different from what we see in a

professional environment. I think it is the only industry that can

have this kind of atmosphere. It's more like recreating college.