Emotions are not just personal feelings; they also are deeply shaped by cultural, social and economic factors. In the workplace, emotional dynamics often reveal underlying socioeconomic inequalities. My research focuses on how certain emotions encapsulate or reflect these inequalities within the service industry. For instance, in Colombian call centres, expanding the labour pool brought agents from more diverse socioeconomic backgrounds than typically documented in the literature. This diversity shaped the strategies workers used to navigate the challenges of their roles, offering insights into the interplay between emotions and inequality.
Few would be surprised by the extensive literature on customer contact centres, often presented as emblematic cases of international service outsourcing. Call centres represent a classic example of global or transnational economies under globalisation, meeting the typical conditions for outsourcing services. These include sufficient technological infrastructure, flexible fiscal policies favouring multinational enterprises, and economic conditions conducive to reducing operational costs. In addition, scholars have debated the importance of shared cultural cues and a large, linguistically proficient labour pool to meet the needs of service-receiving countries. While these discussions often centre on Anglophone contexts, similar patterns emerge in former colonial relationships, such as Portugal and Brazil, Spanish-speaking Latin America and Spain, or France and its former colonies like Morocco and Tunisia.
These relationships underpin the conditions for service outsourcing from the Global North to the Global South, a dynamic studied extensively in countries like India and the Philippines. Sallaz’s work highlights how perceptions of working conditions differ across contexts. In the United States, call centre work is often associated with frustration, whereas in the Philippines, it is seen as a source of pride and self-worth. Sallaz refers to these contrasting experiences as ‘hell’ and ‘life’ in the workplace, illustrating how structural economic and political contexts shape job perceptions. These dispositions influence how workers perceive workplace challenges, including the emotional pressures of service delivery.
My research, however, focuses on what happens when cultural and linguistic proximity are removed from the equation and how this shift impacts job perceptions and agents’ emotional strategies. The global expansion of the Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) industry, particularly in the Global South, has relaxed the cultural and linguistic prerequisites traditionally deemed essential. In Colombia, the growth of the BPO industry has been dramatic, with outsourced services now accounting for 3.5 per cent of the country’s GDP. This is surprising given the low percentage of the population with access to quality education, often attached to English proficiency.
As most Colombians lack opportunities to acquire a second language, entry requirements for English proficiency have been relaxed by creating semi-bilingual service lines. When English proficiency ceases to be a key driver of outsourcing, ‘life’ and ‘hell’ coexist within the same workplace. Contrasting job perceptions arise from social class differences converging within the workplace, influencing how workers perceive their roles and the emotional strategies they employ.
The first aspect noticed was the coexistence of two different job perspectives. In Colombia, where English-speaking outsourced services have expanded despite low levels of English education, two distinct job perspectives emerge. Some workers neither need nor desire such jobs, viewing them as temporary solutions or stepping stones. Others regard these positions as sources of pride and opportunity. It is as though these two groups inhabit entirely different worlds under the same roof. These distinctions extend beyond job perceptions to workers’ emotional strategies to navigate workplace demands, demonstrating a clear link between socioeconomic backgrounds and workplace emotions.
This dynamic resembles a scene from the film Sorry to Bother You (2018), where a veteran call centre agent advises a new hire on how to ‘sound’ successful over the phone: “Sound like you don’t have a care. Got your bills paid. You’re happy about your future […] like you don’t really need this money.”
The second aspect I noticed was the relationship between job perspective and available emotional strategies. Job perception and strategies for handling challenges are closely linked to social class. In my research, I found that some call centre agents came from relatively privileged backgrounds by examining the Colombian social stratification system, educational attainment and family trajectories. These workers often stated: “I don’t need this job”, framing their roles as temporary stops or a way to fund leisure activities. For them, challenges at work were viewed as minor inconveniences, and they felt free to quit or disregard quality metrics if the job became too demanding. Likewise, emotional detachment was a complementary strategy, allowing them to distance themselves from the difficulties of interacting with customers.
In contrast, agents from less advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds viewed call centre work as their primary income source or a way to finance higher education. The breezy detachment described in Sorry to Bother You was unattainable for these workers. Instead, they found pride in their work, particularly as providing services in English conferred a sense of status. Because quitting or ignoring metrics were not seen as viable options, they developed mechanised forms of empathy tailored to corporate objectives. Another common emotional strategy revolved around depersonalising interactions with difficult customers. These agents maintained professionalism while protecting their emotional wellbeing by focusing on understanding the customer’s perspective without taking aggression personally. This approach reflects how socioeconomic conditions shape workers’ emotional capital and influence workplace dynamics.
The coexistence of ‘life’ and ‘hell’ in the same workplace highlights how socioeconomic conditions shape job experiences and emotional strategies. Privileged workers use detachment as a coping mechanism, while others develop resilience through structured empathy. In Colombian call centres, these differences reveal the complex intersections of emotions, inequality and globalisation. By examining these dynamics, we can better understand how structural factors influence job perceptions and the emotional tools workers use to navigate their roles. In this way, paying attention to the emotional dimensions at work can inform us about the socioeconomic inequalities concealed in the requirements and strategies used at work.
Carlos Pineda Ramos is a PhD student and a Graduate Teacher at the University of Bristol Business School. His research is currently focused on emotions’ role as a catalyst for socioeconomic inequalities. Specifically, he is interested in exploring how these inequalities are expressed and reproduced through the requirement and display of specific emotions within the outsourced service industry.
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