Theodoropoulos, Panos
(2021)
Migrant workers, precarity and resistance in Scotland: A study of the barriers to labour mobilisation experienced by migrant workers in precarious occupations.
PhD thesis, University of Glasgow.
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Abstract
In an economy designed to attract and exploit migrant labour, migrants in the UK are at the forefront of the precarious condition. Despite this, examples of migrant unionisation or other forms of collective labour action to improve conditions are comparatively rare. This study aims to research the structural and subjective barriers to the mobilisation of migrant workers in precarious occupations in Scotland. A qualitative approach using interviews with migrants and a period of covert participant observation in various precarious workplaces in Glasgow was employed. It is argued that, alongside the plethora of intersecting factors that structure migrant workers’ experience and impede their capacities for mobilisation, the most significant barrier is to be found in the almost absolute absence of unions and other oppositional movements from migrants’ lives. The study concludes by positing community embeddedness as a crucial component of any process that aims to organise with, and empower, migrant workers. Embeddedness emerges as an inescapable prerequisite for unions and social movements to counter the multiple structural and subjective effects of precarity.
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