Uneven deskilling: recasting the smile curve in a transnational software firm

By grounding Global Value Chains/Global Production Networks studies in Labour Process Theory, this article shows how firms structure work in globalised teams to reproduce North-South inequalities, preventing the Global South from truly ‘catching up’. Following a within-case comparison design, the article compares the work of software engineers within the same firm in the US and India. Through 70 in-depth interviews, it demonstrates that as the firm offshores software work, it also unevenly deskills workers. While ‘execution’ tasks are offshored, ‘conception’ tasks remain onshore. In the process, workers are segmented even as they are combined in a single labour process. It further shows that the interaction of labour-process constraints with the historically-determined location of the software-services market in the Global North shapes the distribution of tasks and reproduces the core-periphery unevenness in this sector.