Indian IT Workers and the Transnational Subcontracting of Immigrant Labor in the United States

• In Event: 351 - Section on Asia and Asian America Paper Session. Work, Labor, and Inequality in Asian America

Abstract

Since the 1990s, thousands of skilled Indian IT workers have been recruited on non-immigrant visas to work in the US for companies that represent the entire corporate spectrum. Despite their full-time and direct employee status with labor vendors or labor intermediaries, these immigrants rotate from one client site to another on temporary contracts, frequently without any job security, consecutive projects, or steady salaries. Based on a multi-year qualitative study conducted in the US and in India with Indian IT professionals, this paper delineates how labor flexibility, one of the signature methods of acquisitiveness in contemporary neoliberalism, has been actuated between the two countries, by mapping the so-called labor supply chain and identifying its key constituencies—starting from the clients and their consulting firms in the U.S. to the Indian-run labor vendors and Bodyshops. Late capital’s formulae for flexible hiring have also required that the messy and costly tasks associated with labor recruitment and management be assigned to external entities. This paper shows exactly how the intricacies of such subcontracting responsibilities—from organizing recruitment sprees in India to completing the visa application process—have been conceived, apportioned, and assigned to Indian-run labor vendors and Bodyshops for the benefit of global capital.

Author

• Payal Banerjee, Smith College