Workplace Surveillance

Employees' personal data are found in many contexts and they flow across borders for a number of reasons. Kirstie Ball's work on call centres in South Africa and the UK plots where customer and employee data travel, and with what consequences. Unlike the persons to whom they refer, the data need no passports, yet the protocols used for their passage do make some significant differences. David Zweig and Jane Webster's research, that began with an examination of employee attitudes to workplace surveillance is now starting to focus on how consumers react to privacy invasions by organizations. Employees' personal data are found in many contexts and they flow across borders for a number of reasons. Kirstie Ball's work on call centres in South Africa and the UK plots where customer and employee data travel, and with what consequences. Unlike the persons to whom they refer, the data need no passports, yet the protocols used for their passage do make some significant differences. David Zweig and Jane Webster's research, that began with an examination of employee attitudes to workplace surveillance is now starting to focus on how consumers react to privacy invasions by organizations.

Vincent Mosco and Simon Kiss are approaching similar questions obliquely, by trying to ascertain how trade unions and anti-globalization movements respond to workplace surveillance. In this case, research will show how employee knowledge of data-flows affects their awareness of and their engagement with surveillance issues. Some workers actually cross borders themselves in search of employment and the work of Cagatay Topal and David Lyon tries to explore where data flow in the case of workers from Turkey, who have found jobs in Germany. Do surveillance patterns serve to open and close doors to such workers?

Relevant publications:

Research team:
David Lyon
Department of Sociology
Queen's University

Vincent Mosco
Department of Sociology
Queen's University

Dr. Kirstie Ball
The Open University Business School, UK

Jane Webster
School of Business
Queen's University

David Zweig
University of Toronto

Simon Kiss
PhD candidate
Department of Political Studies
Queen's University

Cagatay Topal
PhD candidate
Department of Sociology
Queen's University