Purple Collar Work: Transgender Affective Labor at Global Outsourcing Sites

• In Event: 512 - Section on Sex and Gender Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Workplace Experiences

Abstract

This paper examines how affective labor and gendered patterns of occupational segregation are present in the working lives of transgender employees in the business process outsourcing (BPO) industry in the Philippines. Drawing on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews with BPO workers, I develop the phrase “purple collar” work to describe the occupational segregation and clustering of transgender subjects and to highlight how the interactional performance of affective labor by transgender employees is leveraged in corporate workplaces to advance neoliberal globalization and the accumulation of capital. This queer and feminist analysis of transgender workplace experiences opens new perspectives on the gendered dimensions of global outsourcing and it contributes to an emerging field that combines political economy approaches with transgender studies.

Author

• Emmanuel David, University of Colorado-Boulder