Working to live, not living to work: Work, leisure and youth identity among call centre workers in North East England

Abstract

Recent debate has questioned the centrality of work in everyday life. Using evidence drawn from participant observation in a call centre and interviews with young call centre workers, this article suggests that, in locales characterized by insecure labour markets dominated by low-paid service sector jobs, work no longer serves to define individual identity. When the idea of a job for life disappears and fragmented work careers become normal, individuals look beyond their working life to frame their identity and attach meaning and significance to their existence. Analysis of the data provides an opportunity to critically explore Bourdieu's concept of habitus; the notion of a working-class habitus must be re-examined in the face of a postmodern culture thoroughly attuned to the principles of consumer capitalism and neoliberal ideology. What constitutes a 'new' working-class habitus when work, typified here by call centre work, fails to impact on identity formation?The workplace has long been a site of sociological analysis and has a rich history of utilizing ethnography and participant observation to unearth working cultures, opera-

‘Get paid, get out’: online resistance to call centre labour in Canada

“…Existing literature on call centres across the globe often paints a grim portrait of 'modern-day sweatshops' (Fernie and David, 1998) that are defined by monotonous work, poor working conditions (Taylor et al, 2002), poverty-level wages (Lloyd, 2012) and high turnover rates (Taylor and Bain, 1999;Hechanova, 2013). Call centre managers view turnover rates ranging up to 70 per cent as a necessary evil (Bain and Taylor, 2000), as only those who are 'tough enough' to deal with the high levels of stress are expected to survive (Holdsworth and Cartwright, 2003;Holman, 2003;Deery et al, 2010).…”

“…Although presumably some call centres are clean, comfortable workplaces with supportive and fair managers, various issues noted in the literature include time pressure, a lack of supervisory support, intensive monitoring, angry clients, and heavily policed meal and toilet breaks, not to mention cramped, dirty and even (in extreme cases) insect or rodent‐infested workspaces which contribute to acute and chronic illnesses among staff (Holman et al ., ; Taylor et al ., , ; Barnes, ; D'Cruz and Noronha, ; Deery et al ., ). Many employees construct call centre work as a form of temporary and transitional labour until better opportunities arise (Lloyd, ), yet in the precarious job market dominated by similarly low‐paying service jobs, opportunities are often scarce and may also pose risks to workers’ emotional and physical well‐being (Vosko, ; Lewchuk et al ., ).…”

Bourdieu’s symbolic power and postcolonial organization theory in local–expatriate relationships: An ethnographic study of a French multinational corporation in Singapore

“…Bourdieu's theoretical frameworks have been popular among scholarly analyses of social inequality. Bourdieu's seminal works on the habitus find their permutations in studies of marginalized communities examining the experience of informal care among Bangladeshi women in London (Nilufar and Jones, 2008), the responses of African American 'exemplary elders' toward sexually transmitted infections (Lichtenstein, 2008), and a discussion on 'working-class habitus' emergent within a postmodern context of job fragmentation (Lloyd, 2012). For instance, the concept of social capital has been employed in the study of how faith-based organizations provided access to important social networks (Bunn and Wood, 2012), and how differentiated access to social capital shapes notions of vulnerability in gendered contexts (Siegmann and Thieme, 2010).…”

Understanding the Post‐Industrial Assembly Line: A Critical Appraisal of the Call Centre

“…Brophy () also recently identified valuable work across recent call centre literature focusing on identity and subjectivity; connecting sociological investigation of the subject with conditions of employment. My own research uses call centres as a starting point for discussion of identity, subjectivity, ideology and the idea of progress (Lloyd , , forthcoming(a), forthcoming(b)). The interplay between subjectivity and social structures is often evident in workplace sociology (Beynon ; Blauner for example).…”