Inversiones en servicios: nuevas territorialidades en la expansión de call centers en el interior de la Argentina, 2002-2010

Abstract

In Argentina, the year 2002 marks the beginning of a number of changes in production with a strong impact on regional dynamics, due to the arrival of direct foreign investment. An important number of these investments are aimed to develop low-ranking activities which develop competitiveness through the lower labor costs and the tax breaks and subsidies provided to companies. The significant expansion of outsourced call centers –massively and rapidly located in the main cities inland of our country these years– is the empirical evidence of this phenomenon. Analyzing these characteristics and providing a detailed description of the interaction between the state agencies and the political, social, and economic actors involved in the activity of call centers show territorial changes –as new productive activities and employment sources are being developed– as well as mechanisms of cooperation and/or conflict. It is with these mechanisms that national and foreign actors allow and model the inclusion of global into local, fulfilling a new logic of territorial organization, which we represent under the concept of “new territorialities”. Throughout our work, we try to point out the (a) symmetry of power between economic agents and state and extra-state actors, within local peripheral spaces in an era of globalization.