The Production of a Cause for Activism in Argentina: Labor Organization in Call Centers

Abstract

This paper focuses on activist labor organizing in call centers in Argentina. Following a strong tradition in anthropology that has debated the nature of resistance, it discusses previous explanations for labor organizing in call centers, critiquing the common assumption that labor conditions, work processes, and the relations that take place on the shop floor constitute the seed from which forms of resistance, protest, or activism progressively emerge. Instead, this paper describes the relations, practices, and tensions through which multiple actors came together to turn call center working conditions into a cause for political action in Argentina and the collaborations that made that process possible. Based on fieldwork with call center activists between 2012 and 2013, this paper reconstructs the forms of collective organization that established the problem of poor working conditions in call centers as a cause for political action.