3 Methodology
Between 2020 and 2023, 16 in-depth interviews were carried out with call and contact centre migrant operators in mainland Portugal, from the North to the South. The fact the author has worked as a call centre operator during her career professional and having collaborated with the Call Centre Workers Union (STCC), allowed us to establish greater proximity and empathy with some operators and trade unionists. Also, non-probabilistic snowball sampling was used to obtain privileged informants. The interviews and contacts were conducted using the telephone, social media and online platforms, such as Zoom, WhatsApp and Skype. Bearing in mind that call and contact centre work involves rotating days off and shifts, most interviews were conducted using online and telephone services, allowing a greater availability and anonymity for many of the operators that at any time of the day or night, including weekends and holidays, could respond to the call to participate in this analysis.
The interviews covered several dimensions related to their occupational trajectories, such as: family social class, professional experiences and/or transitions in the labour market, training, access to social protection, housing, income, immigration, trade unionism and activism, citizenship, daily and relational life, social representations of institutions, aspirations and perceptions towards the future, the affectations of the pandemic crisis and its multidimensional impacts, and also ways of coping with precariousness and suffering in call and contact centres.
A netnography method approach, comprising ethnographic and virtual fieldwork from the internet, concentrated on social networks and technoculture, where technology and social intersect was also carried out (Kozinets, 2014). It involved the nonparticipant observation in WhatsApp and Facebook groups to establish a closer relationship with drivers and deliverers and to follow not only their interactions, but solidarity and struggle arrangements. The information obtained from the interviews in the first person, it was possible to carry out a discourse analysis using MAXQDA software.
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