Hilary Goodfriend

is a writer and researcher based in San Salvador, El Salvador. She graduated from New York University in 2012 with a bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies and received a Masters in Communications in 2016 from the Universidad Centroamericana “José Simeón Cañas” (UCA), where she currently teaches research methods. Hilary is a member of the Editorial Board of the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), and her writing on the intersections of empire, neoliberalism, and resistance can be found in NACLA, Jacobin Magazine, The Nation, and other publications.

Call Center

Deportation as Outsourcing in El Salvador’s Call Center Industry

In this cycle of migration, deportation, and outsourcing, then, the enterprise of deportation takes on a more sinister tone, as open coercion is combined with precarious forms of wage labor. It offers a singular example of the cynical and cruel efficiency of global neoliberal capitalism. The rise of the call center industry in countries like Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador signals the reimagining of mass deportation as outsourcing, in which not only are jobs offshored, but so are the workers that fill them, whose years of living and working in the United States have made them uniquely qualified for the work.