Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Informational returnees: deportation, digital media, and the making of a transnational cybertariat in the Mexican call center industry

  • Published:
Dialectical Anthropology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In recent years, the US government has intensified the deportation of undocumented Mexican migrants, some of them with long life trajectories in the USA. With weak family networks in their communities of origin and sometimes none at all, many deportees choose to stay in cities along the US-Mexico border, joining the army of underpaid, low-skilled, and informal urban workers. Some take advantage of their transnational experience to earn a better income; within this context, the call center industry is an economic sector that profits from the language facility and sociocultural skills deported populations bring with them from their years spent living in the USA. This paper addresses the working conditions among call center workers in Mexico, with a focus in Tijuana City in the Mexican Northwest. In particular, I explore how migration, deportation, and call center labor produces what I call informational return, a process in which the convergence of culture, deportation, and digital media plays a key role in the constitution of a transnational digital worker.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The term Paisa is an abbreviation of the Spanish word Paisano: a person who is from the same country, a compatriot.

References

  • Alarcón, Rafael and William Becerra. 2012. ¿Criminales o víctimas? La deportación de migrantes mexicanos de Estados Unidos a Tijuana, Baja California. Norteamérica 7 (1): 125–148.

    Google Scholar 

  • Albicker, Sandra, and Laura Velasco. 2016. Deportación y estigma en la frontera México-Estados Unidos: atrapados en Tijuana. Norteamérica 11 (1): 99–129.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Anderson, Jill. 2015. “Tagged as a criminal”: narratives of deportation and return migration in a Mexico City call center. Latino Studies 13 (1): 8–27.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Aneesh, Aneesh. 2006. Virtual Migration. The programing of globalization. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

  • Aneesh, Aneesh. 2015. Neutral accent. How language, labor and life become global. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bettie, Julie. 2014. Women without class. Girls, race, and identity. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bibler Coutin, Susan. 2016. Exiled home: salvadoran transnational youth in the aftermath of violence. Durham: Duke University Press.

  • Boehm, Deborah. 2016. Returned: going and coming in an age of deportation. Oakland: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourgois, Philippe. 1996. In search of respect: selling crack in El Barrio. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Caballero, Yolanda. 2015. Es BC cuarto lugar en los call center a nivel nacional. Frontera, June 20.

  • Castells, Manuel, and Pekka Himanen. 2016. Reconceptualización del desarrollo en la era global de la información. Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chibber, Vivek. 2017. Rescuing class from the cultural turn. Catalyst 1 (1): 27–55.

    Google Scholar 

  • Crehan, Kate. 2002. Gramsci, culture and anthropology. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • De Genova, Nicholas. 2013. The legal production of Mexican/migrant “illegality”. In Governing immigration through crime: A reader, ed. Julie Dowling and Jonathan Inda, 41–58. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • De León, Jason. 2015. The land of open graves: living and dying on the migrant trail. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dowling, Julie, and Jonathan Inda, eds. 2013. Governing immigration through crime: a reader. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dyer-Witheford, Nick. 2015. Cyber-proletariat: global labour in the digital vortex. London: Pluto Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • García, Rodolfo. 2017. El retorno de los migrantes mexicanos de Estados Unidos a Michoacán, Oaxaca, Zacatecas, Guerrero y Chiapa 2000–2012. México: Porrúa.

  • Godínez, Julio. 2013. En 3 meses, 2 mil 364 deportados. Los ‘homies’ del ‘call center’. Milenio, Monday, January 21.

  • Golash-Boza, Tanya. 2015. Deported: immigrant policing, disposable labor and global capitalism. New York and London: New York University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hernández, Lilian. 2015. Se queda en Tijuana 90% de los deportados de EU. Excelsior, December 20.

  • Hernández, Miguel. 2017. Más de 63 mil deportados en 2016 por Baja California. El Sol de Tijuana, February 5.

  • Heyman, Josiah. 2013. Constructing a virtual wall: race and citizenship in U.S.-Mexico border policing. In Governing immigration through crime: A reader, ed. Julie Dowling and Jonathan Inda, 99–113. Stanford, CA: Stanford University press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heyman, Josiah. 2017. Contributions of US-Mexico border studies to social science theory. In The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics and Historical Interactions, ed. Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and Josiah Heyman. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hualde, Alfredo. 2017. Más trabajo que empleo: trayectorias laborales y precariedad en los call centers de México. México: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hualde, Alfredo and Jordi Micheli. 2016. The evolution of call centres and the implication for service quality and workforce management in Mexico. In: Hernández, René, Hualde, Alfredo, Mulder Nanno and Pierre Sauvé (eds.) Innovation and internationalization of Latin American services. Santiago: ONU-ECLAC/El Colegio de la Frontera Norte.

  • Hualde, Alfredo, Tolentino, Hedalid and Mario Jurado. 2014. Trayectorias laborales en los call centers: Empleos sin futuro? In: Guadarrama, Rocío, Hualde, Alfredo and Silvia López (Coord.), La precariedad laboral en México. Dimensiones, dinámicas y significados. México: El Colegio de la Frontera Norte-Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana, Pp: 221–255.

  • Huws, Ursula. 2014. Labor in the global digital economy: the cybertariat comes of age. New York: Monthly Review Press.

  • Kanstroom, Daniel. 2012. Aftermath: deportation law and the new American diaspora. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • La Opinión. 2015. Los deportados son una bomba de tiempo en Tijuana. September 20.

  • Macías-Rojas, Patricia. 2016. From deportation to prison: the politics of immigration enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America. New York: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Martínez, Gabriela. 2015. “Call centers” igualan a maquilas en generación de empleos. La Jornada Baja California, March 6.

  • Mastrogiovanni, Federico. 2017. El asesino que no seremos: biografía melancólica de un pandillero. México: Debate.

    Google Scholar 

  • Méndez, Ernesto. 2017. Terminan mexicanos deportados como indigentes, en Tijuana. Excelsior, May 12.

  • Meoño, Artiga Luis. 2016. Transnational “Homies” and the urban middle class: enactments of class, nation, and modernity in Guatemalan call centres. In Borders in Service. Enactments of nationhood in transnational call centres, ed. Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred Poster, 152–178. USA: Toronto University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mezzadra, Sando, and Brett Neilson. 2014. Border as method, or the multiplication of labor. USA: Duke University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Micheli, Jordi. 2012. Telemetrópolis: explorando la ciudad y su producción inmaterial. México: GEDISA-UAM.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mirchandani, Kiran, and Winifred Poster. 2016. Borders in service: enactments of nationhood in transnational call centres. USA: Toronto University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mirchandani, Kiran. 2012. Phone clones: authenticity work in the transnational service economy. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nadeem, Shehzad. 2011. Dead Ringers: how outsourcing is changing the way Indians understand themselves. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nicholls, Walter. 2012. The DREAMers: how the undocumented youth movement transformed the immigrant rights debate. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peutz, Nathalie. 2006. Embarking on an anthropology of removal. Current Anthropology 47 (2): 217–241.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Plascencia, Luis. 2017. Where is “the border”? The fourth amendment, boundary enforcement, and the making of an inherent suspect class. In The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics, ed. Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and Josiah Heyman. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poster, Winifred. 2013. Hidden sides of the credit economy: emotions, outsourcing, and Indian call centers. International Journal of Comparative Sociology. 54 (3): 205–227.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rios, Victor. 2011. Punished: policing the lives of Black and Latino boys. New York and London: New York University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rivas, Cecilia. 2014. Salvadoran imaginaries: mediated identities and cultures of consumption. USA: Rutgers University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rodkey, Evin. 2016. Disposable labor, repurposed: outsourcing deportees in the call center industry. Anthropology of work review 37 (1): 34–43.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Salas, Renato. 2016. La migración internacional de retorno en el Estado de México. México: Porrúa.

    Google Scholar 

  • Truax, Eileen. 2015. Dreamers. An immigrant generation’s fight for their American dream. Boston: Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos. 2017. Continuity and contiguity of the Southwest North American Region: the dynamics of common political ecology. In The U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region: Cultural Dynamics, ed. Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and Josiah Heyman. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Walters, Williams. 2002. Deportation, expulsion, and the international police of aliens. Citizenship Studies 6 (3): 265–292.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Wessler, Seth. 2014. Call centers: Returning to Mexico but sounding American. Retrieved from http://america.aljazeera.com/features/2014/3/mexico-s-call-centers.html

  • Wright, Melissa. 2006. Disposable women and other myths of global capitalism. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I want to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to previous versions of this paper. I also want to express my gratitude to Leigh Binford for his comments and support while I was drafting this manuscript. Special thanks to Jorge Hernández for his help and friendship during my fieldwork in Tijuana.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Cultural Studies, El Colegio de la Frontera Norte, Tijuana, Ed. 3, Room 3402, Carretera Escénica Tijuana-Ensenada, Km 18.5 San Antonio del Mar, 22560, Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico

    Rafael Alarcón-Medina

Authors
  1. Rafael Alarcón-Medina
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Rafael Alarcón-Medina.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Alarcón-Medina, R. Informational returnees: deportation, digital media, and the making of a transnational cybertariat in the Mexican call center industry. Dialect Anthropol 42, 293–308 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9518-5

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10624-018-9518-5

Keywords

Search

Navigation