Time Won’t Give Me Time: Intersections of Racialized and Gendered Organization of Work in Tech

Abstract

Abstract Drawing on theories of gendered and racialized organizations and research on racialization and citizenship, we weave together an intersectional understanding of gendered racial meaning making in tech work. We focus on workers’ control over time, an important point of overlap between gendered and racialized organizations theories. Based on interviews with 85 tech workers who are either U.S. workers or Indian men in the United States with temporary non-immigrant visas (primarily H-1B visas), we examine the organization of work for tech workers with and without visa restrictions, focusing on control over time. We find that permanent U.S. engineers, mostly men, have considerably more control than Indian temporary workers, who have virtually none. U.S. managers have the most control, but because of the perception that they trade schedule control for less technical work, this work is feminized and devalued among engineers. Together, these conditions help to create a lower status, feminized managerial track and lower status, racialized but masculine technical track drafting the Indian workers in racially subordinated masculinity while preserving agency over time and status for technical workers with permanent legal status. These findings allow us to offer an intersectionally grounded revision of the abstract ideal worker concept.