Borders in Service traces the intersection of service labour and national identity across global call centres in seven countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Mauritius, Morocco, the Philippines, and the US-Mexico border. While most studies on offshore call centres have focused on India, this...

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: The Authentic Clone -- 1. Transnational Customer Service: A New Touchstone of Globalization -- 2. Language Training: The Making of the Deficient Worker -- 3. Hate Nationalism and the Outsourcing Backlash -- 4. Surveillance...

This paper studies the link between working hours and productivity using daily information on working hours and performance of a sample of call centre agents. We exploit variation in the number of hours worked by the same employee across days and weeks due to central scheduling, enabling us to...