Rooted Men

Straight Filipino men are underrepresented (at approximately 15%) in the call center labor force. Gendered norms about Filipino masculinity, this chapter argues, have established English-language fluency as a feminine, or even gay, trait. “Real men,” so to speak, work with their hands and bodies rather than with their voices. Still, many Filipino men do pursue and obtain call center jobs. They do so as means by which to establish roots in the Philippines rather than migrate abroad. To work in the industry, however, straight men must be able to deflect various challenges to their masculinity. Case studies of male workers are used to illustrate this dynamic.

The State

The Philippine state is a key mediator in the global labor market for voice. Colonization by Spain and the United States generated what the scholar Walden Bello calls an “anti-development state.” Catholic ideology limits women’s’ reproductive choices, while a migrant labor policy sends the country’s best and brightest abroad to work and remit money back home. For ordinary Filipinos who finish college, the result is a bifurcated choice: leave the country to find prosperity or stay at home and live in poverty. The megacity of Manila is where so many Filipinos find themselves negotiating this difficult fork in the road.

Labor

For a new generation of young and educated Filipinos, call center work represents a means to fulfill the Philippine dream. In the megacity of Manila, thousands graduate each year from colleges with degrees in vocational fields such as nursing, accounting, and education. It has long been expected that these graduates would go abroad to work and support their families back home. Those who stayed at home could expect to be impoverished professionals. Call center jobs now allow them to remain in their country yet still achieve the Philippine dream. Correspondence analysis of a sample of sixty Filipino call agents reveals patterned variation in terms of their gender identities, resources, obligations, and aspirations.

Assembling a Labor Market

The booming voice industry in the Philippines is a case of an emergent global labor market. New technologies developed over the past several decades allow companies to spin off or relocate their phone services anywhere in the world. Differences in labor costs across regions of the world matter, but the resulting search for ideal labor is as much a social as an economic process. To capture this social dynamic, this chapter analyzes markets as assemblages. The key mediators in such as assemblage are firms, states, and workers. This chapter provides the theoretical tools to understand labor markets as assemblages, and suggests why some assemblages are more stable than others.

One Job, Many Lives

The lives of five workers, in three countries, can tell us much about the world of work today. Ashley, a young American, takes a job in a call center following a family tragedy, but quits it as soon as she is able. Mina, an Indian woman, must leave the industry because the men in her life believe that a “call center job equals a call girl job.” Daisy, from a rural province in the Philippines, desperately seeks call center work as a way to achieve independence. She aspires to be like her cousin Belle, a proud and sophisticated transgender call center agent. Joy, meanwhile, forgoes her dream to migrate and become a nurse in order to stay in the Philippines and make a decent living answering calls.

Gone, Baby, Gone

The author’s premise is that the voice industry will not return to the United States. Reflecting the analysis presented in previous chapters, this chapter offers a dim prognosis for those who wish to bring call center jobs “back home.” As the author notes, the value proposition simply isn’t there. Countries such as India and the Philippines offer labor that is both cheap (relative to the West) and skilled enough (when it comes to English fluency). The Philippines in particular has emerged as a call center “nirvana,” as a stable labor market assemblage in which firms find workers and workers find jobs offering strategic and sustainable solutions to their dilemmas.

Responsible Women

Women in the Philippines, and eldest daughters (ates) in particular, are customarily expected to serve as breadwinners for their families, both immediate and extended. In a country where divorce is illegal and birth control is controversial, too many Filipinas find themselves with a larger network of people to support. Whereas in the past, these “responsible women” would have had to leave the country as migrant workers, call centers offer them a new opportunity to stay at home. Working as a call center agent, in other words, represents a sustainable solution to the dilemma of breadwinning. As a case study of Hannah, a breadwinner, illustrates, these jobs are lifelines.

Firms

Firms and business units that control the technologies to handle phone calls actively constructed a global labor market for voice services. In theoretical terms, they can be considered a form of liquid “voice capital.” An analysis of consulting reports reveals how voice capital sees the world as graded according to cost and human capital. Such grading offers voice capital two potential pools of labor: India and the Philippines. The ethnographic literature on voice offshoring to India shows that there was no stable assemblage there. Men use call centers as steppingstones toward technology jobs, while women who work as call agents are stigmatized.

The Relativity of Work

The case of the call center industry in the Philippines illustrates the relativity of work. Jobs, the author argue, should be evaluated not in relation to some universal standard, but in relation the larger horizon of options and possibilities available to workers. According to this relativistic approach, call center jobs in the Philippines are less digital assembly lines than veritable lifelines. To project the future of these jobs is a difficult task. Automation could render them obsolete. Workers could turn their literal voices into political voice via unionization. This concluding chapter emphasizes how tenuous are the bonds connecting firms and workers, given the fluid nature of contemporary capitalism.

Restless Gays

Gay individuals in the Philippines have long been accepted in the public eye, yet have been discriminated against at work. The gay subculture has developed its own values and ways of being. A key component of successfully performing a gay identity in the Philippines today is speaking English well. It distinguishes one as urbane, cosmopolitan, and sophisticated. For the gay community in Manila, call centers have become known as a “gay paradise.” They are spaces wherein it is possible to safely enact gender identities. Nonetheless, gay workers remain restless, as they dream of leaving the country for the West or of pursuing a profession in the Philippines.