Hostname: page-component-cd4964975-ppllx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2023-03-29T13:00:47.608Z Has data issue: true Feature Flags: { "useRatesEcommerce": false } hasContentIssue true
  • English

Bilingual call centers at the US-Mexico border: Location and linguistic markers of exploitability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2013

Amado Alarcón  and
Josiah McC. Heyman
Amado Alarcón
Affiliation:
Business Administration Department, Univiersitat Rovira i Virgili Avinguda de la Universitat, 1,43205 Reus, Spainamado.alarcon@urv.cat
Josiah McC. Heyman
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Texas at El Paso 500 W. University Ave., El Paso, TX 79968, USAjmheyman@utep.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions[Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bilingual call centers in El Paso, Texas, an extensively bilingual US-Mexico border setting, provide a valuable opportunity to examine empirically what occurs with respect to language shift reversal of Spanish in the context of new information economy. Interviews were conducted with thirty-nine call center operators and managers, and twelve translators and interpreters. Call centers provide an important occupational performance of and recognition to the Spanish language. Nevertheless, bilingual call centers mainly rely on uncompensated, socially provided language skills in Spanish, a freely available “heritage language” in the border setting. Spanish is not valued as a technical competency, worth specific attention to training, management of language features, and extra compensation. Bilingualism is used in the labor market as a sign of cheap and flexible labor, rather than as economically and socially valued “skill,” even though in the new information workplace it serves the latter role. (Call centers, new economy, language and workplace, bilingualism, Spanish, borders)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , February 2013 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achugar, Mariana, & Pessoa, Silvia (2009). Power and place: Language attitudes towards Spanish in a bilingual academic community in Southwest Texas. Spanish in Context 6(2):199–223.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Batt, Rosemary (2002). Managing customer services: Human resource practices, quit rates, and sales growth. Academy of Management Journal 45(3):587–97.Google Scholar
Batt, Rossemary; Doellgast, Virginia; & Kwon, Hyunji (2004). The US call center Industry 2004: National benchmarking report. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.Google Scholar
Boutet, Josiane (2001). Le travail devient-il intellectuel? Travailler: Revue Inernatinalle du Psychopathologie et Psychodynamique du Travail 6:55–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (1995). Verbal hygiene. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2000). Styling the worker: Gender and the commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics 4(3):323–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cameron, Deborah (2005). Communication and commodification: Global economic change in sociolinguistic perspective. In Erreygers, Guido & Jacobs, Geert (eds.), Language, communication and the economy, 9–23. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Castells, Manuel (1996). The rise of the network society. The information age: Economy, society and culture, vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Cohen, Daniel (2009). Three lectures on post-industrial society. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cowie, Claire (2007). The accents of outsourcing: The meanings of “neutral” in the Indian call centre industry. World Englishes 26(3):316–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Del Bono, Andrea (2000). Call centers, ¿el trabajo del futuro? Sociología del Trabajo 39:3–31.Google Scholar
Duchêne, Alexandre (2009). Marketing, management and performance: Multilingualism as a commodity in a foreign call centre. Language Policy 8:27–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gibson, Elizabeth K.; Olmedo, Carlos; & Caire, Mario E. (2008). City of El Paso: Cross sectional comparison of bilingualism in the workplace. IPED Technical Reports. University of Texas at El Paso.Google Scholar
Grin, François; Sfreddo, Claudio; & Vaillancourt, François (2010). The economics of the multilingual workplace. Routledge: New York.Google Scholar
Harris, Richard G. (1998). The economics of language in a virtually integrated economy. In New Canadian perspectives: Changing the language landscape. Official languages in Canada, 35–88. Quebec: Department of Public Works and Government Services Canada.Google Scholar
Heller, Monica (2003). Globalization, the new economy and the commodification of language and identity. Journal of Sociolinguistics 7(4):473–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heller, Monica (2010). The commodification of language. Annual Review of Anthropology 39:101–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Heskett, James L.; Earl Sasser, W. Jr.; & Schlesinger, Leonard A. (1997). The service profit chain: How leading companies link profit and growth to loyalty, satisfaction, and value. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Hidalgo, Margarita (1995). Language and ethnicity in the “taboo” region: The US Mexican border. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 114:29–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Devin L. (2009). The cost of linguistic royalty: Socioeconomic factors in the face of shifting demographic trends among Spanish speakers in the Southwest. Spanish in Context 6(1):7–25.Google Scholar
King, Kendall A. (2009). Global connections: Language policies and international call centers. Language Policy 8(1):1–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leidner, Robin (1993). Fast food, Fast talk: Service work and the routinizations of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Martínez, Glenn (2009). Hacia una sociolingüística de la esperanza El mantenimiento inter-generacional del español y el desarrollo de comunidades hispanohablantes en el sudoeste de los Estados Unidos. Spanish in Context 6(1):127–37.Google Scholar
Micheli, Jordy (2006). El trabajo en la sociedad de la información: El caso ilustrativo del telemercadeo. Estudios Sociológicos 24(70):197–220.Google Scholar
Milroy, James, & Milroy, Lesley (1998). Authority in language: Investigating Standard English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Mirchandani, Kiran (2004). Practices of global capital: Gaps, cracks and ironies in transnational call centres in India. Global Networks 4(4):355–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mirchandani, Kiran (2005). Gender eclipsed? Racial hierarchies in transnational call center work. Social Justice 32(4):105–19.Google Scholar
Morgan, Brian, & Ramanathan, Vaidehi (2009). Outsourcing, globalizing economics, and shifting language policies: Issues in managing Indian call centres. Language Policy 8(1):69–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moss, Phillip; Salzman, Harold; & Tilly, Chris (2008). Under construction: The continuing evolution of job structures in call centers. Industrial Relations 47(2):173–208.Google Scholar
Poster, Winifred S. (2007). Who's on the line? Indian call center agents pose as Americans for US-outsourced firms. Industrial Relations 46(2):271–304.Google Scholar
Rahman, Tariq (2009). Language ideology, identity and the commodification of language in the call centers of Pakistan. Language in Society 38:233–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
REDCO [El Paso Regional Economic Development Corporation] (2010). Call center statistics. El Paso: REDCO, ms.Google Scholar
Reich, Robert B. (1991). The work of nations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Rojas, Yazmin (2007). Call centers in Northeast Mexico. US Commercial Service, Department of Commerce, March 2007.Google Scholar
Roy, Sylvie (2003). Bilingualism and standardization in a Canadian call center: Challenges for a linguistic minority community. In Bayley, Robert & Schecter, Sandra (eds.), Language socialization in bilingual and multilingual societies, 269–85. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Sonntag, Selma K. (2009). Linguistic globalization and the call center industry: Imperialism, hegemony or cosmopolitanism? Language Policy 8:5–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spener, David (2002). The unraveling seam: NAFTA and the decline of the apparel industry in El Paso, Texas. In Gereffi, Gary, Spener, David, & Bair, Jennifer (eds.), Free trade and uneven development: The North American apparel industry after NAFTA, 139–60. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Spolsky, Bernard (2009). Language management. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Phil, & Bain, Peter (2005). “India calling to the far away towns”: The call centre labour process and globalization. Work, Employment, and Society 19(2):261–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Timmons, Wilbert H. (1990). El Paso: A borderlands history. El Paso: Texas Western Press.Google Scholar
Velázquez, Isabel (2009). Intergenerational Spanish transmision in El Paso, Texas: Parental perceptions of cost/benefit. Spanish in Context 6(1):69–84.Google Scholar
Wiley, Terrence G. (2001). On defining heritage learners and their speakers. In Peyton, Joy, Ranard, Donald, & McGinnis, Scott (eds.), Heritage languages in America: Preserving a national resource, 29–36. McHenry: Delta Systems.Google Scholar
Wirtz, Ronald A. (2001). Phone home. Fed Gazette (Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank), May.Google Scholar