Louise Waite

Hyper-precarious lives: Migrants, work and forced labour in the Global North

This paper unpacks the contested inter-connections between neoliberal work and welfare regimes, asylum and immigration controls, and the exploitation of migrant workers. The concept of precarity is explored as a way of understanding intensifying and insecure post-Fordist work in late capitalism. Migrants are centrally implicated in highly precarious work experiences at the bottom end of labour markets in Global North countries, including becoming trapped in forced labour. Building on existing research on the working experiences of migrants in the Global North, the main part of the article considers three questions. First, what is precarity and how does the concept relate to working lives? Second, how might we understand the causes of extreme forms of migrant labour exploitation in precarious lifeworlds? Third, how can we adequately theorize these particular experiences using the conceptual tools of forced labour, slavery, unfreedom and precarity? We use the concept of ‘hyper-precarity’ alongside notions of a ‘continuum of unfreedom’ as a way of furthering human geographical inquiry into the intersections between various terrains of social action and conceptual debate concerning migrants’ precarious working experiences.

Creating a space for young women's voices: using ‘participatory video drama’ in Uganda

This article draws upon research that explored the experiences of young women in relation to sexual health in Uganda with a view to enhancing gender-sensitive strategies. We have coined the phrase ‘participatory video drama’ to describe the exploratory methodology that the young women participants in our research used to present stories about their lives. The aim of this article is to suggest that ‘participatory video’ (PV) and ‘participatory video drama’ (PVD) are innovative methodological tools to utilise when working with participants who experience voicelessness in their everyday lives. We contribute to an emerging body of work around this methodology by suggesting that the process of PV provides a novel and engaging platform for participants to express their experiences. PVD further creates spaces for the performative exploration of embedded power relations and is therefore informative and has the potential to be transformatory and empowering.

Multiply vulnerable populations: mobilising a politics of compassion from the 'capacity to hurt'

This paper reflects on the concept of insecurity defined as ‘the capacity to hurt’. It begins by considering asylum seekers and refugees as hyper-precarious groups that have experienced bodily, material and psychological ‘hurt’ in the UK. At the same time, the paper considers how these hyper-precarious groups are perceived to have the capacity to hurt (bodily, materially, psychologically and spatially) the majority population. Having drawn out two understandings of the capacity to hurt—both the ability to be or feel hurt and the act of hurting others, we argue that a shared recognition of what it means to feel hurt (co-suffering or suffering together)—albeit to very different extremes and with very different consequences—and an understanding of the processes which drive this might be mobilised politically to challenge the act of hurting others. In doing so, we argue for a group politics of compassion to respond to increasingly insecure times.

Citizenship, belonging and intergenerational relations in African migration

Acknowledgements Notes on Contributors Introduction: Citizenship, Belonging and Intergenerational Relations in African Migration J.Cook & J.Hoffman African Migration in its National and Global Context J.Barou, P.Aigner & B.Mbenga From Generation to Generation: Changing Family Relations, Citizenship and Belonging C.Attias-Donfut & L.Waite Typical Migration Stories: Comparing Trajectories of African Migration V.Roos, J.Cook, S.Aouici, R.Gallou & P.Aigner Country Monographs: France J.Barou Country Monographs: Britain L.Waite & P.Aigner Country Monographs: Post-Apartheid South Africa I.Kalule-Sabiti, A .Yaw Amoateng, B.Mbenga & J.Hoffman Understanding African Migration: Intergenerational Relations, Citizenship and Belonging in a Comparative Context C.Attias-Donfut, J.Cook & J.Hoffman References Bibliography

Accession 8 Migration and the Proactive and Defensive Engagement of Social Citizenship

Following the expansion of the European Union in 2004 unprecedented numbers of Accession 8 migrants from Central and Eastern Europe entered the UK. These migrants are often concentrated in particular urban neighbourhoods, which are already routinely home to diverse communities and/or characterised by high levels of social deprivation. Using original data from a study in a northern English city, this paper explores the ways in which established communities experience and make sense of the local impact of new migration within their neighbourhoods. The belief that newly arrived migrants are in competition with established communities for finite local jobs and welfare resources is central to the expressed concerns of established communities about the potential for A8 migration to have a localised negative impact. Utilising Ellisons (2000) theoretical insights, the paper argues that established communities’ concerns, rather than being simply an expression of xenophobic intolerance, have their basis in how the expansion of the EU facilitates opportunities for the ‘proactive engagement’ of citizenship status among A8 migrants, whilst often triggering a more ‘defensive engagement’ among members of local host communities.

From Generation to Generation: Changing Family Relations, Citizenship and Belonging

The process of integration in the context of migration is closely linked to the duration of the stay in the host country and to the passing of the generations. American sociological migration research has long been interested in changes from one generation to the other, with regard to assimilation and integration processes, as exemplified in the early twentieth century by Hansen’s law: the first generation migrates, the second generation escapes to assimilation, and the third comes back to the origins. Although this so called law can be (and has been) criticised, the debate that it raises reveals the deep interconnections of migrants’ generational transmissions and processes of belonging and citizenship. Since the middle of the twentieth century, migratory flows have substantively developed and been acutely shaped by the social, political, cultural and economic characteristics of globalisation. As has been widely documented, the movement of people around the world in various numbers and for different lengths of times is an important constituent part of these sets of global flows and processes (King, 1995; Vertovec, 2009).

Precarious Irregular Migrants and Their Sharing Economies: A Spectrum of Transactional Laboring Experiences

There is growing interest in the sharing economy as a different way of living in neoliberal capitalist societies, but this discussion is frequently heavily classed and the ethos generally rests on excess capacity of goods and services. This article intervenes in this emerging body of writing to argue that it is equally important to explore the types of sharing and exchange that are survival-compelled among those with precarious livelihoods. Precarious migrants are a group facing significant livelihood pressures, and we are concerned here with a particular category of insecure migrants: irregular migrants including refused asylum seekers in the United Kingdom. Such migrants are especially shaped by their sociolegal status, and without rights to work or welfare they are susceptible to exploitation in their survival-oriented laboring. Existing literature from labor geographies and the subdisciplinary area of unfree and forced labor has not generally focused on the experiences of these migrants as house guests in domestic realms, nor has it thoroughly explored their transactional labor. As such, this article argues that the moral economies of gifting and sharing within such labor create and reproduce particular social structures, cultural norms, and relationships that position people along a spectrum of freedom and exploitation.

Asylum Seekers and the Labour Market: Spaces of Discomfort and Hostility

This article examines the relationship in the UK between asylum-seeking and the labour market. Since 2002, asylum-seekers have not been allowed to work unless they have waited over twelve months for an initial decision on their asylum claim. This policy change occurred as employment was considered a ‘pull factor’ encouraging unfounded asylum claims. Despite not having the right to work, asylum-seekers – and especially those whose applications for refugee status have been refused by the UK government – interact with the labour market in manifold ways. Drawing on an ESRC-funded study in the UKs Yorkshire and Humber region and related studies, this article argues that both asylum-seekers and refused asylum-seekers form a hyper-exploitable pool of ‘illegalised’ and unprotected workers. As a vital part of their survival terrain, work is largely experienced as for-cash labouring in low-paid labour market sectors where the spectre of exploitation and even ‘modern slavery’ are perpetual threats. Recent policy shifts are deepening such threats through creating increasingly ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘hostile’ environments for certain categories of migrants.

Socio-legal status and experiences of forced labour among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK

Socio-legal status determines the differential rights to residence, work and social welfare that accrue to migrants depending on their particular immigration status. This paper presents analysis of original empirical data generated in qualitative interviews with migrants who had both made a claim for asylum and experienced conditions of forced labour in the UK. Following an outline of the divergent socio-legal statuses assigned to individual migrants within the asylum system, early discussions in the paper offer a summary of key aspects and indicators of forced labour. Subsequent sections highlight the significance of socio-legal status in constructing such migrants as inherently vulnerable to severe exploitation. It is concluded that immigration policy and, more particularly, the differential socio-legal statuses that it structures at various stages of the asylum process, helps to create the conditions in which severe exploitation and forced labour are likely to flourish among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK.

‘I think I'm more free with them'—Conflict, Negotiation and Change in Intergenerational Relations in African Families Living in Britain

ABSTRACT While the family is increasingly being recognised as pivotal to migration, there remain too few studies examining how migration impacts on intergenerational relationships. Although traditional intergenerational gaps are intensified by migration, arguably there has been an over-emphasis on the divisions between ‘traditional’ parents and ‘modern’ children at the expense of examining the ways in which both generations adapt. As Foner and Dreby [2011. “Relations Between the Generations in Immigrant Families.” Annual Review of Sociology 37: 545–564] stress, the reality of post-migration intergenerational relations is inevitably more complex, requiring the examination of both conflict and cooperation. This article contributes to this growing literature by discussing British data from comparative projects on intergenerational relations in African families (in Britain, France and South Africa). It argues that particular understandings can be gained from examining the adaptation of parents and parenting strategies post-migration and how the reconfiguration of family relations can contribute to settlement. By focusing on how both parent and child generations engage in conflict and negotiation to redefine their relationships and expectations, it offers insight into how families navigate and integrate the values of two cultures. In doing so, it argues that the reconfiguration of gender roles as a result of migration offers families the space to renegotiate their relationships and make choices about what they transmit to the next generation.