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44 U.S.F. L. Rev. 353 (2009-2010)
Cyber-Coolies and Techno-Braceros: Race and Commodification of Indian Information Technology Guest Workers in the United States

handle is hein.journals/usflr44 and id is 357 raw text is: Cyber-Coolies and Techno-Braceros: Race and Commodification of Indian Information Technology Guest Workers in the United States By SHMRILA RUDRAPPA* Coolie is a word that... has no established etymology: some place it from the Tamil kuh (hire), others find it in use in sixteenth- century Portugal as Koli, after the name of a Gujarati community, still others notice that it sounds like the Chinese ku-li (bitter la- bor) or like the Fijian kui meaning dog. One way or another, to be called a coolie is to be denigrated, and to be considered at best as a laborer with no other social markers or desires.' Introduction IN RESPONSE TO SUSAN SONTAG'S celebration of English-speak- ing Indians' abilities to somehow magically, on their own volition, in- sert themselves in the global economy as call center workers, Harish Trivedi coined the term cyber-coolie. Indian call center workers, Trivedi noted, were cyber-coolies of our global age, working not on sugar plantations but on flickering screens, and lashed into submis- sion through vigilant and punitive monitoring, each slip in accent or lapse in pretence meaning a cut in wages.2 I use the terms cyber- coolie and techno-braceros to describe the large numbers of Indian information technology workers in the United States.3 These techno- * Sharmila Rudrappa is an associate professor of sociology and is affiliated with the Center for Asian American Studies and the Center for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research and teaching interests are race, gender, immigration, and labor. She is currently researching the cultural politics of assisted reproductive technologies in India. 1. VijAY PRASHAD, EVERYBODY WAS KUNG-Fu FIGHTING: AFRO-ASIAN CONNECTIONS AND THE MYTH OF CULTURAL PURITY 71-72 (2001). 2. Harish Trivedi, Letter to the Editor, Cyber-Coolies, Hindi and English, TIMES LITER- RY SUPPLEMENT (London), June 27, 2003, at 17. 3. The term techno-bracero was used by Lawrence Richards, founder of the Software Professionals' Political Action Committee, and other critics of the H-1B visa program while lobbying for immigration reform in 1995. William Branigin, White Collar Visas: Importing

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