Life-making on the line: Capitalist value, social reproduction, and the politics of call centre labour in Portugal

Abstract

This article explores how value is generated in the Portuguese call centre sector by examining its reliance on the commodification of socially and historically rooted reproductive capacities. Previous research on call centres has often focused on the disembedding, disembodiment, depersonalisation, and desubjectification of human linguistic agency, frequently neglecting the familial, educational, and moral infrastructures that make labour power both viable and exploitable. Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, I argue that the extraction of value in this sector relies not only on linguistic output or emotional labour but also on historically embedded reproductive capacities, such as empathy, ethical judgment, and communicative skills. These capacities are shaped by intergenerational efforts aimed at social mobility and national modernisation. These reproductive investments, which are developed outside the wage relationship, are appropriated by capital through a labour regime that requires personalisation while enforcing standardisation. By integrating social reproduction theory with call centre studies, this article reframes call centres as critical sites where the tensions between production and reproduction become evident, contested, and productive of surplus value.