Night Work

This essay explores the burdens of nightwork through the eyes of call center employees in India. India’s call centers are revealing of the ways in which work lives are reorganized to fit global processes. When the nights of agents are hitched directly to the days of other places, we witness not only a triumph of the global economy; we also notice certain dysfunctions of a functionally integrated world.

"Day for Night in Metro Manila. Call Centres and New Night-Time Neighbourhoods"

This article analyses the dynamics of night-time neighbourhoods in Manila, in the context of the translation of Business Process Outsourcing activities (mainly call centres) in the city at night. Mainly at the service of the US market, these centres operate out of time, as they are beyond the usual rhythms of the metropolis. They blur the frontiers between night and day. This paper thus questions the relationships between night, cities and new economic sectors. A first part analyses the attempts to dissociate the nocturnal biases from the activity; before showing how the night was domesticated. A last part analyses how despite these efforts, the night remains influential, not only on the rhythms and work conditions, but also on the representations associated to the night workers.

The main theoretical contribution of this paper is to show that the transitional processes from circadian to post-circadian capitalist era have reduced capabilities for sociability of migrant night shift workers. It analyses the three main contributing factors to the corrosion of solidarity amongst migrant denizens: (a) the expansion of the working day into the night; (b) the major alterations of time over time, and the nurturing ground for these changes, (c) global cities, as the nurturing ground for occupational polarization.

This essay explores the burdens of nightwork through the eyes of call center employees in India. India’s call centers are revealing of the ways in which work lives are reorganized to fit global processes. When the nights of agents are hitched directly to the days of other places, we witness not only a triumph of the global economy; we also notice certain dysfunctions of a functionally integrated world.

Shift-work is defined as work in which one employee is changed with another employee in work delivery, while the function of the business is continuous. Approximately 15–20% of the working population in Europe and the USA is involved in shift-work, mainly in the fields of health care, industry, communication and entertainment. In 2007, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) concluded that “shift-work which includes disruption of circadian rhythm is potentially carcinogenic to humans”, and classified night work from possible to probable carcinogen (group 2A). The aim of this paper is to review the recent literature on the relationship between shift-work and carcinogenesis, and more specifically, with reference to forms of cancer for which there are already epidemiological reports. With regards to breast cancer, which is the leading cause of death from cancer in the female population worldwide, studies provide indications of a causal relationship. In view of this evidence, the theory of R.G. Stevens, as suggested in 1987, that light-at-night is a risk factor for breast cancer, could account for at least a small percentage of the differences in rates of breast cancer worldwide. As far as prostate, endometrial and colorectal cancers and
lymphoma are concerned, rare epidemiological studies and laboratory findings have been documented. In parallel, later data on the possible pathophysiological basis of such a relationship are reviewed. The suggested mechanisms of shift-work mediated disruption of circadian rhythms at the cellular level include (a) suppression of melatonin secretion, which could lead to oncogenesis, and (b) direct suppression of the genes controlling the circadian rhythm, which could lead to changes in the regulation of the cell cycle. The retrieved data are reviewed in association with the role of occupational medicine, and the need is emphasized for the design and implementation of studies to assess this possible relationship from the viewpoint of the interests of the employees.