List of Illustrations, Tables, Boxes vii
Acronyms ix
Prologue: A Stranger's Adventure xiii
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction 1
Body Shopping: Brief Overview 4
Ethnicization, Individualization, and Transnationalization 7
Structure of the Book 11
Chapter 1 The Global Niche for Body Shopping 13
"Financial Democracy" and the Virtual Shortage of IT Labor 14
War for IT Talent and Wall of Regulation 19
Chapter 2: Producing "IT People" in Andhra 24
"D-Shops" and "T-Shops" 26
"Have Lands in Andhra, Have a House in Hyderabad, and Have a Job in America" 30
Producing IT People as a Family Business 34
Chapter 3: Selling "Bodies" and Selling Jobs 39
Fee-Paying Workers and Body Shops in Hyderabad 43
India as the Nexus of Global Body Shopping 48
Chapter 4: Business of "Branded Labor" in Sydney 53
"Marketing and Development Are Totally Different Stories" 57
"Only Indians Can Handle Indians" 59
Overlapping Businesses 62
Same Roof, Different Hats 65
Chapter 5: Agent Chains and Benching 70
Differentiated Circles 75
"Indians Are the Most Dangerous Ones!" 77
Overbooking Seats on the Bench 80
Chapter 6: Compliant Bodies? 82
Interlocks between Body Shops and Community Associations 86
Workers as Intermediaries 90
Relations among Workers: Support Yes, Solidarity No 92
The Way Out 97
Chapter 7: The World System of Body Shopping 100
The United States of America: "Mecca for IT People" 102
Global Gateways: Singapore, Malaysia, and the Middle East 104
U.S. Satellites: The Caribbean and Latin America 107
New Frontiers: "Sind Sie Inder?" and "Is There a German Dream?" 108
Ending Remarks The "Indian Triangle" in the Global IT Industry 110
Appendix: Essay The Remembered Fieldwork Sites: Impressions and Images 117
Biographical Index of Informants 129
Notes 149
References 167
Index 173

How can America's information technology (IT) industry predict serious labor shortages while at the same time laying off tens of thousands of employees annually? The answer is the industry's flexible labor management system--a flexibility widely regarded as the modus operandi of global capitalism today. Global "Body Shopping" explores how flexibility and uncertainty in the IT labor market are constructed and sustained through concrete human actions.
Drawing on in-depth field research in southern India and in Australia, and folding an ethnography into a political economy examination, Xiang Biao offers a richly detailed analysis of the India-based global labor management practice known as "body shopping." In this practice, a group of consultants--body shops--in different countries works together to recruit IT workers. Body shops then farm out workers to clients as project-based labor; and upon a project's completion they either place the workers with a different client or "bench" them to await the next placement. Thus, labor is managed globally to serve volatile capital movement.
Underpinning this practice are unequal socioeconomic relations on multiple levels. While wealth in the New Economy is created in an increasingly abstract manner, everyday realities--stock markets in New York, benched IT workers in Sydney, dowries in Hyderabad, and women and children in Indian villages--sustain this flexibility.

Xiang Biao is Academic Fellow at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology and the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society at the University of Oxford. He is the author of Transcending Boundaries.