Books by Deepa Kylasam Iyer
Writers Workshop , 2021
Zodiac is a collection of poems that evocatively portrays the journey of love and loss within the... more Zodiac is a collection of poems that evocatively portrays the journey of love and loss within the space-time of a year, traversing all seasons and zodiac signs. The book begins in the autumnal landscape of loss and heartbreak exploring how the winter of desolation gradually turns to healing and eventually gives way to the spring of hope and the summer of love. The poet narrates this story through 98 poems, experimenting with forms from free verse to haiku sets. Peopled with places, animals, plants, planets and things, this book asks us what it means to be human among a menagerie of other beings.
AuthorsPress, 2016
In Turning Thirty and Other Poems Deepa Kylasam Iyer becomes the storyteller of outer landscapes ... more In Turning Thirty and Other Poems Deepa Kylasam Iyer becomes the storyteller of outer landscapes as well as the inner mindscape that brim with rich effervescence. The outer and inner world mirror themselves in a way, countering and complementing each other. We meet minds wandering without bodies and forms searching for new meanings. The contested past questions the quelled present, what is lost comes wandering into worlds where they can no longer belong. Through the magic and logic of poetry, the utmost we can hope for is to make a little sense of things- from disembodied thoughts, to beastly mirages and imaginary friends.
Papers by Deepa Kylasam Iyer
International Strike Report, 2024
The origins of this report date back to V International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts i... more The origins of this report date back to V International Conference Strikes and Social Conflicts in the summer of 2022 in Rotterdam. The following fall, researchers from the Netherlands and Türkiye organized an online workshop that aimed to bring together scholars and activists who investigate contemporary working-class protests by using some form of protest event analysis. Almost a year later, in December 2023, we organized a second workshop and discussed the idea of preparing an international report on strikes. This time, the USA team was among the organizers. This report results from this second workshop and our collaborative work in the following months.
We aim to increase the visibility and provide a better understanding of workers’ strikes throughout the world. Although creating this report involved a lot of work, we want to continue preparing it in the following years. The reason why we are focusing on strikes in 2022, rather than 2023, is due to the labour-intensive nature of the protest event analysis research method. We hope to release future reports closer to the calendar year we are researching next time.
Labor Action Tracker Annual Report, 2024
With the emergence of “hot labor summer” and an increase in the coverage of major work stoppages,... more With the emergence of “hot labor summer” and an increase in the coverage of major work stoppages, 2023 marked an important year for the U.S. labor movement. We are excited to release the third Labor Action Tracker Annual Report, in which we present key findings from our 2023 work stoppage data. Since funding cuts by the Reagan administration in the early-1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has only documented work stoppages involving 1,000 or more workers that last at least an entire shift. By only recording large work stoppages, official data sources exclude the vast majority of strike activity, posing issues for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars in determining the extent of workplace conflict across the country. Increasing considerably over the past three years, strikes are an important tool for workplace and labor activism. In this report, we follow the lead of the BLS and document work stoppages, which include both strikes and lockouts.
Urban Planning , 2024
This article examines how digital platforms focused on citizen engagement affect urban transforma... more This article examines how digital platforms focused on citizen engagement affect urban transformation based on multiple case studies from Bengaluru, India. The research question is: What type of initiatives and designs of digital citizen platforms enable co-production? Co-production is defined as the use of assets and resources between the public sector and citizens to produce better outcomes and improve the efficiency of urban services. The study uses qualitative and quantitative approaches. Evaluative metrics of citizen engagement in digital platforms are done at two levels: platform metrics and initiative metrics. Each platform is evaluated under several variables that indicate the type of ownership, period of operation, aims and types of initiatives, and impact and levels of engagement. Then, the digital platforms are mapped for the extent of digital co-production that matches the type of digital interaction with a form of citizen-government relationship. The findings indicate that the orientation of digital co-production, where it exists, seems to be around the dimensions of co-testing and co-evaluation rather than co-design and co-financing. Furthermore, the digital platforms under study primarily view citizens as users rather than collaborators, limiting the scope of digital co-production. The involvement of urban local governments and private partners in a single platform strengthens the degree of citizen engagement, including the scope for co-production. Finally, there is a strong offline counterpart to citizen engagement through digital platforms where true co-production exists.
International Journal of Trade and Global Markets, 2024
The objective of this study is to analyse the correlation between initial conditions and cross-co... more The objective of this study is to analyse the correlation between initial conditions and cross-country macroeconomic impact of Covid-19 on OECD economies. The study uses group-wise multivariate linear regression modelling to examine the link between macroeconomic variables of interest and the duration of the pandemic, severity of its impact, and annual investment growth rate. The main result from the study shows that variables related to debt such as domestic credit to private sector, private sector debt and debt-to-GDP ratio had significant relationship with the duration and severity of the crisis as well as the investment growth rate during Covid-19. The original contribution of the study is in bringing out the correlation between initial conditions and first order effects of the pandemic on the economy. The policy implications of the results indicate short, medium and long-term measures required to mitigate the systematic risk posed by the pandemic.
AI Report, ILR School, Cornell University, 2023
Contact centers have long been lead innovators in adopting new technologies to restructure jobs a... more Contact centers have long been lead innovators in adopting new technologies to restructure jobs and manage workers. Between the 1990s and 2000s, the first wave of digitalization transformed what were then called ‘call centers’ through innovations in call volume tracking, automatic call distribution, and electronic monitoring and performance management. The growth of the internet and fiber-optic digital networks enabled the relocation of jobs far from customers through outsourcing and offshoring. Since the mid-2010s – and accelerating in the early 2020s – a new set of technologies have been transforming contact center jobs. This second digital transformation is based on advances in artificial intelligence (AI), enabled by faster network speeds and cloud computing. A range of new AI-based tools are being used to automate customer service and sales via chatbots and voicebots, to perform a growing range of back-office tasks, and to enable more intensive and tailored forms of remote monitoring, coaching, training, and scheduling. In this report, we summarize initial findings from research on how these AI-based tools are being used in contact centers, and their impacts on work and workers. The study focused on contact centers in the US, Canada, Germany, and Norway. We carried out matched case studies in all four countries, including interviews with managers, worker representatives, and employees. We also conducted matched contact center worker surveys in the US (N=2891) and Canada (N=385) between December 2022 and January 2023. In the US, we conducted a survey in 2017 on a similar sample of contact center workers, with some identical questions – allowing us to also describe changes in average responses between these two time periods.
Society of the Anthropology of Work, 2023
This article examines digital nomads and their search for freedom by taking the case of Chiang Ma... more This article examines digital nomads and their search for freedom by taking the case of Chiang Mai, Thailand. The article argues that the idea of freedom from authority that is achieved through mobility and location independence is itself reflective of the digital nomad’s position in a system that privileges some with mobility while disallowing others.
The covid-19 pandemic turned into a question of access to safety and security for millions worldw... more The covid-19 pandemic turned into a question of access to safety and security for millions worldwide. This study examines how the narratives of pandemic citizenship unfolded for India's internal migrant workers who lost their livelihood and housing during the lockdown and were forced to return to their native villages. Using the framework of Legacy Russell's glitch politics, this paper illustrates two instances of glitchy encounters that relayed migrant worker stories during the first national lockdown between March and June 2020. The first instance was the long walk home that became a collective act of refusal to be rendered invisible in the pandemic narratives. The second example was citizen journalism that used mainstream media as amplifiers of migrant worker voices. The main argument of the study is that glitches enabled seemingly marginal narratives to momentarily overcome structural inequalities and become powerful chroniclers of the pandemic.
Citizenship Studies, 2023
This article examines how technopolitical response to covid-19 resulted in differentiated urban c... more This article examines how technopolitical response to covid-19 resulted in differentiated urban citizenship regimes in India’s smart cities. Using Isin and Ruppert’s framework, we argue that India’s digital citizens enacted their subjectivities in response to acts of calling, closing and opening in the cyberspace. Acts of calling encouraged citizens to participate and engage with the state online, systematically excluding those who did not have access to digital infrastructures. Acts of closing were implemented through the technologies of the surveillance state diminishing rights of freedom and privacy. In response, digital citizens enacted their political subjectivities through acts of opening by means of online campaigns, petitions and citizen journalism. Although the risk of technocracy remains real, we argue that the interplay of calling, closing and opening digital acts enabled the enactment of digital citizenship in India by raising the old questions of social citizenship rights and new forms of data and digital rights.
This study aims to understand the underlying structures and processes that make innovation ecosys... more This study aims to understand the underlying structures and processes that make innovation ecosystems and classify them using a typological approach. A nested typology approach is used to classify innovation ecosystems based on two underlying dimensions, technology and organization. It brings out four types of innovation ecosystems namely focal, modular, shared and integrated based on the structures and processes of their technology and organization. This paper advances the understanding of innovation ecosystems beyond the structural approach to an integrated model that connects structures and processes of institutions, formal and informal channels of technology diffusion, and individual and collective efforts at innovation.
Mega events, urban transformations and social citizenship (Routledge), 2022
This chapter examines the impact of mega-events on social citizenship using the lens of critical ... more This chapter examines the impact of mega-events on social citizenship using the lens of critical urbanism. Mega-events are situated within neoliberal regimes of citizenship that are consumerist and entrepreneurial. These regimes exclude communities based on their purchasing power, and robs them of their political subjectivities and social citizenship. The excluded citizens have confronted the legacy of mega-events with questions of social impact through aggregate spending, value-added employment creation, social housing, use of public infrastructure and social services, and power of cultural self-determination. This chapter explores the possibilities of urban regeneration open to active social citizenship through mega-events. The main conclusion is that active social citizenship has to leverage mega-events by means of participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation, research and knowledge production, community mobilization, and demand for direct urban policy, in order to facilitate urban development.
South Atlantic Quarterly , 2021
Platform capitalism has enabled digital platforms to bring producers, consumers, and workers in a... more Platform capitalism has enabled digital platforms to bring producers, consumers, and workers in a multisided marketplace with the purpose of collecting data. The resulting commodification of materiality and sociality in the digital sphere and the proprietary control of data open opportunities for value creation and realization, quite distinct from the value propositions of industrial manufacturing. As the relationship between value generation and human labor becomes tenuous or invisible, management strategies to appropriate value extends beyond labor control to direct appropriation. This article explores how labor responds to such devices of control and appropriation by digital platforms. Using the typological approach, the study argues that labor resistance emerges as a direct response to the management strategies of platforms in the form of granular resistance, data activism, trade unions and workers’ organization, and collective ownership.
Russian Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS), 2020
This article examines how COVID-19 impacts migrant workers and what can be done for their equitab... more This article examines how COVID-19 impacts migrant workers and what can be done for their equitable transition after the pandemic is subdued. The immediate policy response to the pandemic was closing of national borders that resulted in a state of emergency on a global scale. The need for continuous and safe passage of goods, services, and workers was acknowledged by laws and policies that were an 'exception' to the rule, and deemed 'essential'. This approach resulted in five distinct types of impact on the migrant worker in the spheres of employment, health, movement, social protection, and opportunities. This study uses the framework of 'just' transition from sustainability discourse to imagine a labor-centered long-term policy for the migrant worker.
Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, 2020
Economic & Political Weekly, 2020
The legalist approach taken so far with respect to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender mov... more The legalist approach taken so far with respect to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movement has marginalised more radical possibilities of resistance by rendering diverse identities and intersectionality invisible. In this context, the historical examination of the LGBT movement in comparison with the civil rights movement and local case studies gives the trajectories of "lost" possibilities a new context and significance. These possibilities are explored here.
Indian Journal of Labour Economics, 2020
Automation impacts wage levels at the micro-level, and the structure of employment at the macro-l... more Automation impacts wage levels at the micro-level, and the structure of employment at the macro-level. Job polarisation is defined as the automation of ‘middle-skill’ jobs that require routine cognitive and manual applications while high and low-skill occupations are preserved. This paper examines the nature of job polarisation in India during the period 1983-2012 when Indian manufacturing sector was being automated. The research uses disaggregated data from National Sample Survey Office and examines the impact of supply-side factors such as nature of employment and presence of educated labour force. The study has three observations. First, the increased demand for high-skilled workers in the formal manufacturing sector is due to skill-bias of technology and conforms to theoretical expectation. Second, the transition of agricultural labourers to low-skill manufacturing sectors such as construction and textiles signals distress in traditional manufacturing sector to provide employment to these groups. Third, the over-supply of secondary and tertiary educated labour force has resulted in the squeezing out of middle-skilled workers from middle-skill jobs to relatively low-skill manufacturing and service occupations. This explains the persistence of routine occupations even after automation. The study concludes that in the Indian manufacturing sector, increased demand for high and low-skill jobs has co-existed with the middle-skill jobs due to supply-side factors.
Journal of Land and Rural Studies, 2019
Globally, increased investor interest in land is confronting various types of political mobilisat... more Globally, increased investor interest in land is confronting various types of political mobilisations from communities at the grassroots level. This paper examines the case study of a land occupation movement called Chengara struggle in the largest corporate plantation in southern India. The movement is led by the historically dispossessed scheduled caste and scheduled tribe communities. The objective of the study is to understand the type of institutional transformation of property rights that the movement is calibrating. Institutional theory is used to determine the nature and direction of transformation using the framework of economic and political transaction costs. The paper concludes that the central demand of the struggle for individual title deed has higher private gains for right-holders, but overall negative gains for agricultural productivity. The paper concludes that productivity-oriented demands to restructure land-use rights within plantations might converge in the land struggles of the future.
This dissertation examines how land occupation movements by the historically disadvantaged commun... more This dissertation examines how land occupation movements by the historically disadvantaged communities in plantations in Kerala is questioning property regimes.
The presentation summarizes SAAPE Poverty Report 2016 and brings out the economic and political c... more The presentation summarizes SAAPE Poverty Report 2016 and brings out the economic and political critiques of development models in South Asia.
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Books by Deepa Kylasam Iyer
Papers by Deepa Kylasam Iyer
We aim to increase the visibility and provide a better understanding of workers’ strikes throughout the world. Although creating this report involved a lot of work, we want to continue preparing it in the following years. The reason why we are focusing on strikes in 2022, rather than 2023, is due to the labour-intensive nature of the protest event analysis research method. We hope to release future reports closer to the calendar year we are researching next time.
We aim to increase the visibility and provide a better understanding of workers’ strikes throughout the world. Although creating this report involved a lot of work, we want to continue preparing it in the following years. The reason why we are focusing on strikes in 2022, rather than 2023, is due to the labour-intensive nature of the protest event analysis research method. We hope to release future reports closer to the calendar year we are researching next time.