Kiran Mirchandani

Professor, Adult Education and Community Development Program, OISE

Areas of interest

Immigration and the labour market experiences of professional migrants to Canada
Processes of racialization and gendering in workplaces
Economic globalization and the transnationalization of service work
Labour standards and their enforcement
Welfare fraud policy and the criminalization of poverty

Biography

Dr. Mirchandani's research and teaching focuses on gendered and racialized processes in the workplace; critical perspectives on organizational development and learning; criminalization and welfare policy; and globalization and economic restructuring. Using qualitative, interpretive approaches, her work is based on qualitative interviews with transnational service workers in India and workers in precarious jobs in Canada.

Select publications

BOOKS

Vosko, Leah .F, Guliz Akkaymak, Rebecca Casey, Shelley Condratto, John Grundy, Alan Hall, Alice Hoe, Kiran Mirchandani, Andrea M. Noack, Urvashi Soni-Sinha, Mercedes Steedman, Mark P. Thomas, and Eric M. Tucker. International/Québec contributors are Nick Clark, Dalia Gesualdi-Fecteau, Tess Hardy, John Howe, Guylaine Vallée, and David Weil. 2020. Closing the Enforcement Gap: Improving Protections for Workers in Precarious Jobs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Mirchandani, K, Mukherjee, S and Tambe, S. (2020) Low Wage in High Tech: An Ethnography of Service Workers in Global India. Oxford University Press.
Mirchandani, K. and Poster, W. eds. (2016). Borders in Service: Enactments of Nationhood in Transnational Call Centres. University of Toronto Press.
Mirchandani, K. (2012). Phone Clones: Authenticity Work in the Transnational Service Economy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Livingstone, D., Mirchandani, K. and Sawchuk, P. (Eds). (2008). The Future of Lifelong Learning and Work: Critical Perspectives. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Mirchandani, K. and Chan, W. (2007). Criminalizing Race, Criminalizing Poverty: Welfare Fraud Enforcement in Canada. Halifax: Fernwood.

JOURNAL SPECIAL ISSUES

Avis, J, Mirchandani, K. and Warmington, P. (2017). Special Issue on VET, Race and Ethnicity. Journal of Vocational Education and Training. 69, 3.

ARTICLES

Mirchandani, Kiran, Mary Jean Hande, and Shelley Condratto (2019). “Complaints-Based Entrepreneurialism: Worker Experiences of the Employment Standards Complaints Process in Ontario, Canada.” The Canadian Review of Sociology 56(3): 347-367.
Mirchandani, Kiran and Bromfield, Sheldon (2019). “Roundabout wage theft: The limits of regulatory protections for Ontario workers in precarious jobs.” Journal of Labor and Society. 1-17.
Perry, J. & Berlingieri, Adriana & Mirchandani, Kiran. (2019, online version). Precarious work, harassment, and the erosion of employment standards. Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An International Journal. (2020 for print version with page numbers).
Mirchandani, K. (2019) Globality in Exceptional Spaces: Service workers in India’s Transnational Economy. In A. K. Sahoo and B. Purkayastha eds. Routledge Handbook of Indian Transnationalism. Oxon and New York: Routledge.
Trotz, A, Mirchandani, K and *Khan, I (2019). Growing Downhill? Contestations of Sovereignty and the Creation of Itinerant Workers in Guyanese Call Centers. Pp. 297-325 in Bulkan, A and Trotz, A eds. Unmasking the State: Politics, Society and Economy in Guyana. Kingston: Ian Randle Publishers. Reprint.
Mirchandani, Kiran, Leah F. Vosko, Urvashi Soni-Sinha, J. Adam Perry, Andrea M. Noack, Rebecca Hall and Mary Gellatly (2018). Methodological K/nots: Designing Research on the Enforcement of Labor Standards. Journal of Mixed Methods Research. 12 (2) 133-147.
Mirchandani, K. and Brugha, M. (2017). Alternative Futures for Work-Related and Vocational Education: Stratification and Enterpreneurialism. In Youth as/in Crisis: Young People, Public Policy and the Politics of Learning. Sara Carpenter and Shahrzad Mojab (eds.). Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Mirchandani, K. (2016) The Organization of Service Work. Pp. 348- 364 in Stephen Edgell, Heidi Gottfried and Edward Granter eds. The Sage Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment. London: Routledge.
Mirchandani, K. (2016) ‘We’re not talking to people, we’re talking to a nation”: Crossing Borders in Transnational Customer Service Work. Pp. 359-369 in Prasad, Prasad, Mills and Helms Mills eds. The Routledge Companion to Critical Management Studies. New York: Routledge.
Mirchandani, K. (2015) Flesh in Voice: The No-touch Embodiment of Transnational Customer Service Workers. Organization, 22 no. 6: 909-923.
Das Gupta, T., Man, G., Mirchandani, K and Ng, R (2014) “Class Borders: Chinese and South Asian Canadian Professional Women Navigating the Labor Market. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal. 23 (1): 55-83.
Mirchandani, K. (2013) Caller Hate: The Orchestrated Production of Western Nationalism. Economic and Political Weekly, 25, 3:69-76.
Mirchandani, K. (2013). Pockets of the West: The Engagement of the Virtual Diaspora in India. Pp. 231-245 in T. T. Yong and M. M. Rahman (Ed.), Diasporic Engagement and Development in South Asia. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan.
Sangha. J. K., Slade, B., Mirchandani, K., Maitra, K., Shan, H. (2012). An Ethnodrama on Work-Related Learning in Precarious Jobs: Racialization and Resistance. Qualitative Inquiry, 18, 3, 286-296 Mirchandani, K. (2012). Learning Racial Hierarchies: communication skills training in transnational customer service work. Journal of Workplace Learning, 24, 5, 338-350.
Mirchandani, K., Maitra, S. and Sangha, J. (2012). Treats and Threats: Global Cultures in India's Call Centres. In A. Prasad (Ed.), Against the Grain: Advances in Postcolonial Organization Studies (pp. 135-154). Denmark: Copenhagen Business School Press.
Gellatly, M., Grundy, J., Mirchandani, K., Perry, J.A., Thomas, M., Vosko, L. (2011). Modernizing Employment Standards? Efficiency, Market Regulation, and the Production of the Illegal Claimant in Ontario. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 22, 2.
Mirchandani, K., Ng, R., Coloma-Moya, N., Maitra, S., Rawlings, T., Shan, H., Siddiqui, K., and Slade, B. (2011). The entrenchment of racial categories in precarious employment. In N. Pupo, D. Glenday and A. Duffy (Eds.), The Shifting Landscape of Work (pp. 119-138). Toronto: Nelson Educational Ltd.