Traveling in Cyberspace: Virtual Migration and Globalization

When you are picking up a phone call from customer service, have you ever wondered about their identity hidden behind the perfect tone and robotic language? Globalization provides a broader geographical context in which different nodes of the value chain are interconnected transcontinentally. In this system, would you be surprised that the phone call you received at 1 pm from customer service from an American company is sitting in the office of the other side of the world, India, late at night? As opposed to migrating to the U.S. and physically working for the company, India workers virtually migrate through cyberspace. The virtual migration traps India workers into a dilemma between promoting economic growth and subordinating to system imperatives rather than personal values.

The virtual migration is connecting labor forces to foreign corporations in an anon-physical sense to integrate information. In the global economy, there are different parties in the political system and different nodes located in the value chain. The global labor market is segmented into high- and low-skilled workers and jobs. The laborers in poor countries are assigned with low-skilled, repetitive jobs. Continuous revolutions of the instruments of production, distribution, and consumption have enabled a new labor regime in which labor moves and work will not banish. The increasing labor mobility and ease of spatial integration in cyberspace simplify the process of division of labor in the global value chain. Thus, such improvements enable core countries such as the United States to “outsource” and “subcontract” work to decrease the permanent size and cost of the workforce.

While the U.S. benefits from the high quality, cost-effective and flexible Indian laborers, the developing countries, also benefit economically from the increased productivity and output. The services provided by Indian workers are counted as exports because they serve foreign firms while remaining in their domestic country. Therefore, the profit earned counts as part of the GDP. Starting from the year 2000, India, one of the BRIC countries has taken the second leading position after China, as its GDP has grown from 462 USD billion to 2.26 USD trillion in the past 18 years.

In addition, according to the high-technology exports graph, from 2000 to 2006, the export value increased fairly steadily from around 2.4 USD billion to 5 USD billion. Over the following three years the export value shot up to over 10 USD billion, and then it continued rising until 2013 when it reached its peak at approximately 17 USD billion. Even though there was a drop in value after 2013, India’s overall exports have increased dramatically.

Despite the benefits of increasing economic profits, the polarization of workforces in the commodity chain in the customer service industry arouses ethical concerns. The time-zone differences undermines effective communication and problem-solving in the global economy. For the regions where there is time overlap, the solutions are more accessible such as renegotiating meeting schedules. However, for areas with different time zones, such as India and the United States, part of the workers completely change their lifestyle and sleeping schedule to adjust to their work agendas. Consequently, Indian customer services, who make 250-300 calls a day, are working under immense pressure. They work at an unstandardized time resulting in temporal dissonance. They may suffer from mental and physical disorders such as insomnia, depression, declining eyesight, and disturbed metabolism. More crucially, firms require workers Americanize by learning the American accent, culture, customs, festivals, literature, and history. This reconfiguration forces them to deviate from their own culture and society.

Indeed, the increase in productivity as a result of segmentation and automation benefits the integrating global community and economy development, nevertheless, we cannot neglect the resulting socio-cultural problems incurred.

Edited by Naomi Santiago

Sources:

Aneesh, A. Virtual Migration: the Programming of Globalization. Duke University Press, 2006.

“GDP (Current US$).” Literacy Rate, Adult Female (% of Females Ages 15 and above) | Data,

data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD. Accessed 2018 December 17th.

“World Development Indicators.” DataBank Error Page, 2018,

databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=NY.GDP.MKTP.CD&country=IND.

Accessed 2018 December 17th.