In the sweat shops of Silicon Valley, immigrant dreams are shattered.
"Hurry up Line 1! You are not here to talk, you are here to work! GEE-VAAN WHAT'S THE HOLD UP?!" The supervisor's words always carried a certain violence, intended to elicit immediate obedience, the way a prison guard would use a night_stick. Jivan had only been at the plant for a few months, but had grown accustomed to the daily harassment by the supervisor. So, in response to the harangue, he went back to stocking the conveyer belt with printers, but not before saying, "You know, in India workers would not stand for this treatment."
Jivan and I had taken a minute's rest from the back-breaking work to talk about our lives outside the plant. It was a minute we thought was well-deserved. Our line had already met its daily quota of 846 components, and yet the reward was a humiliating scolding. It was the end of another monotonous and dehumanising day on a Silicon Valley assembly line.
Jivan had come to the US less than a year ago from Kerala, where he had run a metal shop. Just as my parents did over 30 years ago, he came to America so that he could provide better education to his children, and has plans to return once his two boys finish school. But in the highly volatile and unstable labour market of what is being touted as the 'new economy', Jivan finds himself struggling just to stay afloat in a job that has remained constant in the Valley for the past two decades: low-wage electronics assembly.