Abstract
In the present article I discuss the migration of work from the West towards the East, making direct references to this kind of work relocation between the Netherlands and Romania. More specifically, this article focuses on the Dutch language based activities relocated or outsourced to Romania, a situation which puts customers in contact with “brains without bodies” or “invisible work-migrants”. In order to highlight the trend of migrating jobs I take a look at the evolution of job advertisements for Dutch speakers in Romania. Then, I investigate the impact that the international relocation of back-office and front-office business activities has both on the employees who take over the activity and on the customer’s satisfaction. Factors such as linguistic similarity, cultural practices, and attitudes towards customers’ complaints shape the outcomes of such relocations. Given that the otherness between employees and customers can be faster noticed in the direct, “voice-to-voice” interaction, the situation of call-centres deserves special attention for the analysis. Call-centres clearly feature the characteristics of non-places, where the employee must assume a similar identity to that of the customer.