David McCollum

The role of recruitment agencies in imagining and producing the ‘good’ migrant

This paper focuses on representations of labour migrants and interrogates how such imaginaries shape migrant recruitment and employment regimes. The recruitment and employment of labour migrants inevitably involves a range of knowledge practices that affect who is recruited, from where and for what purposes. In particular, this paper seeks to advance understandings of how images of ‘bodily goodness’ are represented graphically and how perceptions of migrant workers influence the recruitment of workers to the UK from Latvia. The research described in this paper is based on interviews with recruitment agencies, employers and policy makers carried out in Latvia in 2011. The analysis results in a schema of the ‘filtering’ processes that are enacted to ‘produce’ the ‘ideal’ migrant worker. An important original contribution of this paper is that it details how recruitment agencies, in not only engaging in the spatially selective recruitment of labour from certain places but also drawing socially constructed boundaries around migrant bodies, play a key part in shaping migration geographies both in sending and destination countries.

‘Flexible’ workers for ‘flexible’ jobs? The labour market function of A8 migrant labour in the UK

There is considerable academic and policy interest in how immigrants fare in the labour market of their host economy. This research is situated within these debates and explores the nexus between migrant labour and segmented labour markets. Specifically the analysis focuses on East-Central Europeans in Britain: a sizeable cohort of largely economic and recent migrants. A large quantity of interviews with low-wage employers and recruiters is used to examine the role served by East-Central European migrant labour in the UK labour market, to question whether this function is distinct from conventional understandings of the function of migrant labour and to explore how employer practices and other processes ‘produce’ these employment relations. Based on the findings from this approach, an argument is developed which contends that the ready availability of a well perceived cohort of migrant labour has sustained and extended flexible labour market structures towards the bottom end of the labour market.

Trends in A8 migration to the UK during the recession

A substantial proportion of contemporary migration flows to the UK are made by nationals from countries which have recently joined the EU. The nature of A8 migration during the recession is examined in this paper, mainly using data from the Worker Registration Scheme. The recession has seen a decline in new A8 migrants entering the UK labour market, but the decline has been sectorally uneven, with demand for migrant labour being most persistent in the agricultural sector, raising questions about why this part of the UK economy is so different.

Escalators, Elevators and Travelators: The Occupational Mobility of Migrants to South-East England

In a meritocratic society it is assumed that the chance of achieving occupational mobility (OM) is not strongly influenced by ones starting position in terms of class or ethnicity. This paper seeks to explain the drivers of the high levels of OM achieved by one ethnically defined group: the Scots. Educational attainment is shown to be particularly important. A second level of interest is the changing role of internal migrants to a global city in the face of increased international skilled immigration. We investigate whether there is any evidence that the OM of internal migrants is being hindered as a result. The evidence points instead to immobile local labour being more disadvantaged occupationally than mobile labour from peripheral regions of the state.

Getting off the Escalator? A Study of Scots Out-Migration from a Global City Region

Something new is happening to reverse the historical trend of skilled Scots moving to London for career progression. The Scottish population of London and the South East is falling and this despite Scots enjoying continued occupational success within the South East labour market. The authors ask why Scots are leaving the UKs main escalator region and then investigate how these migration changes can best be theorised relative to literature on the mobility of the ‘new service class‘. Building on Fieldings escalator region hypothesis, the authors report on recent research on longer distance flows out of the UKs main escalator region. They advance the critique of the escalator region hypothesis set out by Findlay et al and ask why people would leave a global city offering good opportunities for occupational mobility. Demographic regime change provides only a partial answer. Other explanations can be found in the changing mobilities of the new service class as they engage in what Smith has defined as ‘translocal’ and ‘transnational’ urbanism. The authors argue that Scotlands changing relationship with London and the South East may be representative of a wider set of changes in migration linkages between regional economies and global cities.

Imaginaries of the ideal migrant worker: a Lacanian interpretation

This paper explores the production of ‘ideal’ migrant workers by recruitment agencies in the context of Latvian labour migration to the UK. The fantasies of the ‘ideal’ worker created by recruiters have a particular hold on migrant subjectivity, but they often hide inconsistencies and slippages implicit within the fabric of recruitment discourse and practice. By drawing on the notions of fantasy and desire as developed by Jacques Lacan, this paper analyses the determination of subjectivity in a migration context and explores both unconscious and conscious processes of identification. On the basis of an analysis of drawings sketched by respondents during qualitative interviews conducted in Latvia, it challenges narrower assumptions about migrants’ search behaviour and stable expectations of labour migration, and exposes the split and contested nature of migrant selfhood. It concludes with conceptual observations about the complex process of identification and the unachievable figure of the ‘ideal’ worker.

Property-based welfare and the search for generational equality

In many countries, the demographic shift towards an ageing population is occurring against a backdrop of welfare state restructuring. The paradigm of asset-based welfare may become increasingly central to these developments as individualised welfare is touted as part of the response to the challenge of funding the care of an ageing population. This article focuses on the framing of housing wealth as a form of asset-based welfare in the UK context. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of housing as a form of asset-based welfare, both in terms of equity between generations and equality within them. We argue that housing market gains have presented many homeowners with significant, and arguably unearned, wealth and that policy-makers could reasonably expect that some of these assets be utilised to meet welfare needs in later life. However, the suitability of asset-based welfare as a panacea to the fiscal costs of an ageing population and welfare state retraction is limited by a number of potential practical and ethical concerns.

Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.

Investigating A8 migration using data from the Worker Registration Scheme: Temporal, spatial and sectoral trends

Since the enlargement of the European Union in May 2004, large numbers of migrants from the A8 countries (Poland, Czech Republic, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary and Estonia) have joined the UK labour market. A8 migrants were required to register under the Worker Registration Scheme if they took up employment in the UK for one month or longer. The research presented here analysed this administrative data in order to shed light on spatial, sectoral and temporal trends in registration flows. The findings can help inform understanding of migration patterns, and responses to them, at the national and local levels. The volume of labour migration flows from East-Central Europe has been substantial and has been concentrated in particular segments of the labour market, with most migrants engaging with the hospitality and agricultural sectors and often working through recruitment agencies. The volume of new A8 arrivals has decreased since the onset of the recession in 2008 but still remained substantial at the end of the Worker Registration Scheme period. The demand for migrant labour has been relatively consistent in agriculture compared to other sectors of the economy during the recession. Conceptually this points to migrant labour serving distinct ‘functions’ in the UK labour market.

The sustainable employment policy agenda: What role for employers?

This article focuses on the sustainable employment policy agenda and the role that employers can play in promoting more sustainable transitions from welfare into work. Moving into work has conventionally been regarded as a remedy to labour market exclusion. However, these transitions often do not lead to sustained employment, with many people persistently cycling between work and welfare. Some contemporary measures are now attempting to place a greater emphasis on not just getting people into jobs but also sustaining them in them. Simultaneously there has been a shift towards getting employers ‘on board’ in the design and delivery of welfare programmes. This analysis uses interview data from employers and service providers in Glasgow and Dundee to investigate these issues. The key line of argument developed is that employer participation in the provision of welfare services can create a ‘win-win-win’ situation for jobseekers, employers and service providers. However, significant barriers exist to effective partnership working.