Global "headhunting": the world information industry and the skilled labor force in India

There are some countries in the world that are more important, and that is the conscience of mankind.

Some countries in the world are more important, and that is the conscience of mankind.

About this book

This book was written by the author Xiang Biao according to his doctoral thesis. In order to finish his thesis, he did two years of field investigation in Australia and India. The English version of this book was published by Princeton University Press in 2006 and won the Anthony Ritz Award from the American Anthropological Society in 2008, which is the highest award for urban anthropology monographs.

Core content

Why is India's overall social development slow, while software export is the only one? Why are there so many foreign IT workers in America? In the high-tech field, capital can flow at a high speed around the world, so how is the labor force engaged in these industries mobilized and managed?

This book is the author's observation and thinking after two years of field trips in Australia and India. He pointed out that in the it industry, the key to the global movement of labor force lies in the "hunting" system, that is, the industrial chain in which multinational enterprises recruit IT technical workers from India through intermediaries. The author saw a real IT craze at the grassroots level in India, not only for products or industries, but also for a large number of IT people. The "body hunting" system links India's internal social structure with global capitalism.

I. Definition of hunting phenomenon

Search is a special phenomenon unique to India. The basic operation of headhunting is that Indians open body-building shops all over the world, recruit it workers from India, and then provide these laborers to customers according to the project needs of customer enterprises.

Why is this phenomenon unique to India? In addition to the low cost, high quality and large number of world-renowned IT workers, the key answer lies in the high transnational surplus value of Indian IT workers, that is, the difference between the input required to produce IT labor in India and the average wage in the global market. Australia, the United States and other developed countries are eager to attract international talents, but their visa and immigration policies have not been fully liberalized. Faced with high interests and complicated management and procedures, labor intermediary came into being.

Different from the traditional recruitment agencies, the labor agency directly manages the workers on behalf of the employer. In the search, workers have no direct legal relationship with their real employers. Professional operation is more efficient in dealing with recruitment and immigration procedures, and it is very convenient even when employees are dismissed on a large scale, and will not cause too many negative effects on the host country.

Second, India's grassroots "IT people" production line

IT professionals can bring high salaries and even change the lives of the whole family. Therefore, at the grass-roots level in India, a lot of resources have been mobilized to the production process of IT personnel, which has become a collective project of local economy and life.

Dowry system is one of the key mobilization means. In Indian marriage, the amount of dowry paid by the woman directly determines her marital and family status. When a family produces a successful son who is engaged in the IT industry, the first thing people around him envy is that he can bring a large dowry to the family, which is regarded as the return of the groom's parents' early investment in their son. In the end, some typical marriage patterns such as "Qian peasant woman matches the groom in the city, and the local bride marries overseas Indian nationals" were formed.

Modern economic concepts such as "pre-sale" and "futures" have been boldly introduced into the grassroots marriage market. When the father of the bride sees a promising boy, he can support the boy's college tuition and expenses for going abroad, provided that he marries his daughter after graduation. Successful IT people not only bring high dowry, their own rich income and overseas remittance, but also help other women in the family pay their dowry. In some areas, the custom of marrying a daughter first and then a daughter-in-law has also been formed. Marrying all the daughters means that there will be no big expenses at home in the future, and the dowry can also be quoted reasonably when the son gets married. Therefore, the dowry system has become an important stimulating factor for IT labor supply.

In addition, in the process of training "IT people", there are many phenomena such as hosting training institutions, family fund-raising and dowry support, all of which reflect the class, caste and gender inequality of Indian society itself.

Third, the commercial operation of labor intermediary.

In the 1980s and 1990s, many Indian professionals who immigrated to Australia originally intended to engage in software development, but eventually set up labor agencies. A large part of the reason behind this comes from implicit nationality discrimination. At that time, it was very difficult to enter the traditional software market in Australia. Even if they enter the IT industry, Indians are faced with the problem that their career path is too narrow, and they cannot be promoted to a certain level, or it is difficult to transfer technical positions to management positions. Therefore, some professionals are "forced" to join the hunting industry. But as Indians, they also have special advantages in IT services, and can promote the overall development of the company by matching the recruitment with other IT businesses.

The hunting industry also has a "food chain". IT workers rely on the introduction of labor agents to get jobs. Small and medium-sized and the largest number of labor intermediaries need to cooperate with large intermediaries because customer resources are monopolized. Even if small and medium-sized labor intermediaries know the needs of large companies in advance and have suitable candidates, because large companies often only cooperate through their own designated intermediary outsourcing companies, these labor intermediaries cannot directly recruit people.

In this food chain from big companies, big intermediaries, small and medium-sized intermediaries to IT workers, there is also a special phenomenon-"bench technology". The so-called "sitting on the bench" refers to the time of waiting for work indefinitely, similar to airline oversold tickets. Even if someone cancels the ticket, the vacant seats will not be wasted. Small and medium-sized intermediaries will excessively introduce IT workers. When big intermediaries throw out job opportunities, they can send suitable candidates at any time and don't waste this opportunity. Commercial companies can select and eliminate skilled workers at any time, and the cost of forming this inventory will be borne by IT workers themselves, which will not cause a talent burden to the local government and society.

Through the intermediary chain and bench technology, the hunting industry has established a huge but highly differentiated IT talent pool. Indians are weak in the face of multinational enterprises, and small and medium-sized labor intermediaries are weak in the face of large intermediaries. However, the hunting system provides a channel for the bottom workers to become entrepreneurs, and the hope of upward mobility makes them willing to obey this system.

Fourthly, the phenomenon of headhunting shows a new phenomenon of globalization.

Whether it is a big company in India or a small and medium-sized company abroad, their development depends on the hunting and hiring system. IT is those small and medium-sized labor agencies and unemployed or semi-unemployed IT workers that provide the necessary human resources for the development of the industry. As an informal trade organization, Hunting Body is the foundation of those formal and dominant IT industries, and this organization transfers the risks of IT industry to ordinary IT workers by selling jobs to workers and sitting on the bench.

The phenomenon of body hunting seems to rely on new concepts such as "information revolution" and "globalization", but it is still based on a series of traditional unequal relations at all levels of society, matching the floating labor force with the floating capital. Therefore, once we thought that the era of globalization had changed the existing world order, but the fact has not changed in essence, and inequality is still deeply rooted. However, hunting leads to new wealth accumulation strategies and value transfer methods. Capitalism in the hunting situation is reflected in the increasing transnational flow of manpower and capital, which strengthens the established pattern to some extent.

The author hopes that this study can promote successful people's new understanding and reflection on reality and form new actions. In addition to those high-value and high-value workers, there are more people who have made direct or indirect contributions to global wealth, but they are usually considered to have nothing to do with the globalization process. It is worth thinking, why do they look worthless? It is the improvement of capital utilization and wealth accumulation efficiency that covers up all this, and the victory of the market makes extreme inequality no longer a serious problem. Reflection is the responsibility of the winner. This change in consciousness is the prerequisite for the gradual realization of more fair and just development in the future.

line

1. The author hopes to make a breakthrough by focusing on India's overseas research, instead of observing a foreign society that he didn't know originally. Academic progress is always accompanied by a wider source of social facts, and a broader vision is more conducive to the formation of new ideas and the development of a new pattern of social sciences in China.

2.IT doesn't really matter whether there is a gap between the demand and supply of IT labor. What is important is that employers want to see the continuous expansion of labor supply, thus supporting the continuous expansion of enterprise business.

3. India's IT craze is not the manufacture of IT products, but the emergence of "IT people".

Although the headhunting system enables Indian IT workers to work freely in the global market, in their eyes, the world is far from being a free world without countries and borders.

Different groups in the world, whether they are beneficiaries or victims, whether they are voluntary or forced, are linked together as never before because of globalization, and no one can stop this trend.