The making of the ‘precarious’: examining Indian immigrant IT workers in Canada and their transnational networks with body shops in India

Abstract

Since the 1990s, temporary staffing agencies have been playing a key role in managing and supplying a ready pool of skilled workers to the global IT market. Yet, such agencies often regulate their workforce to maintain flexible, low-cost and accommodating workers. Due to continuing racial and gendered barriers, many immigrant Indian IT professionals living in Canada are increasingly depending on many such India-based staffing agencies (body shops) to get into IT employment globally. Such associations I argue are turning the workers into a self-regulated and precarious workforce subjected to severe regulations and flexible work patterns of the agencies.

Keywords:

• globalisation
• body shopping
• transnational network
• South Asian immigrants
• skilled migration
• information technology