ABSTRACT

This article focuses on Indian tech-workers’ views on labour and social movements in the context of precarity, digital globalism, and the neoliberal transformations of the culture and economy. Based on interviews of twenty information technology (IT) workers in India, conducted in 2018, I found that they inhabit the liminal spaces between precarity and privilege. I call it the precarity of liminality. This ambiguous status, combined with the assumption of white-collar prestige, prevents tech-workers from defending their labour rights. Indeed, even the trade unions formed exclusively for tech-workers are constrained by their members’ assumption of privilege. I hold that this is the case because the neoliberal market has transformed the local underpinnings of culture into a homogeneous simulacrum and codified performance, so that even the cultural diversity of these workers fails to resist their co-option into the global logic of labour and capital.

摘要

本文重点介绍印度技术工人在不稳定、数字全球化以及文化和经济的新自由主义转型背景下对劳工和社会运动的看法。根据 2018 年对印度 20 名信息技术 (IT) 工作者的采访，我发现他们生活在不稳定和特权之间的边缘地带。我称之为阈限的不稳定。这种模棱两可的地位，加上白领声望的假设，阻止了技术工人捍卫自己的劳工权利。事实上，即使是专门为技术工人成立的工会也受到其成员享有的特权的限制。我认为情况之所以如此，是因为新自由主义市场已经将文化的本土基础转变为同质的拟像和编纂的表演，