Travelling ‘down South’: language, cultural capital and spatiality in Chennai’s information technology sector

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article examines the role of language in shaping work processes in the Indian information technology (IT) industry, which has become synonymous with the country’s ‘new’ middle class. In the South Indian city of Chennai, the industry has attracted a number of migrants from other parts of the country, including from non-metropolitan areas south of Chennai. Frequently referred to (and also self-identifying) as being from ‘down South’, many of these employees have been provided new opportunities for social mobility through IT work. Using qualitative methods, this article interrogates the discursive registers of ‘down South’. It demonstrates how the term is layered over fluency in English, a crucial form of cultural capital in the industry, to mark certain employees as possessing less ‘talent’ (or ‘merit’). Moreover, it moves beyond the emphasis on English in existing literature on the Indian middle class to determine the role of regional languages, particularly Tamil, on the IT office floor. By exploring the intersections of cultural capital with the spatialities of language and linguistic identities, this article reveals the internal diversity of the middle-class IT workforce and contributes to wider discussions on the structures of inequality that shape urban working lives.