Article2014

Mobility strategies, ‘mobility differentials’ and ‘transnational exit’: the experiences of precarious migrants in London’s hospitality jobs

272 citations0/0 files storedWork Employment and Society

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Migration and Labor Dynamics Labor Law and Work Dynamics Employment, Labor, and Gender Studies

Abstract

This article explores the patterns of occupational and geographical mobility of migrant hospitality workers, drawing on participatory research in London. It focuses on the ways in which migrants strategize around temporary employment and move across different jobs and locations trying to improve their precarious lives. Combining labour process theory and the perspective of the autonomy of migration the author reviews the concept of ‘mobility power’ as a form of resistance to degrading work. The findings illustrate that, while certain categories of migrants remain trapped in temporary employment, others manage to move on occupationally, develop aspects of their lives beyond work and engage in new migration. The main argument is that, in contrast to mainstream accounts of migrants’ labour market incorporation, migrant temp workers use their transnational exit power to quit bad jobs and defy employers’ assumptions about their availability to work under poor conditions.

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References

1971Analyzing social settings : a guide to qualitative observation and analysis 2003Social Research Methods 2008Re-Thinking Intersectionality 1980Contested Terrain: The Transformation of the Workplace in the Twentieth Century 2010Migration, immigration controls and the fashioning of precarious workers 1995The Endogeneity between Language and Earnings: International Analyses 1992Ethnography Unbound: Power and Resistance in the Modern Metropolis.2004Migrant Transnationalism and Modes of Transformation

Cited by

2016The extension of the theory of person-organization fit toward hospitality migrant worker 2020Embodied intersectionality and the intersectional management of hotel labour: The everyday experiences of social differentiation in customer‐oriented work 2022Wage Theft and the Struggle over the Working Day in Hospitality Work: A Typology of Unpaid Labour Time 2021Workplace regimes: a sociological defence and elaboration 2023Labor process theory and critical HRM: A systematic review and agenda for future research 2016

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