Stuart Hodkinson

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.

Autonomy in the city

This paper is about the emergence of social centres and their role in both the development of autonomous politics and the growing urban resistance movement in the UK to the corporate takeover, enclosure and alienation of everyday life. In European terms, social centres are not new and, as Montagna in this issue demonstrates, have played a particularly important role in the political and cultural world of Italys autonomist scene. Previously marginal in British radical movements, since the eruption of global anti‐capitalism in the late 1990s, the number of occupied or legalized social centres and other autonomous spaces in the UK has been on the increase, playing crucial roles in confrontational politics from reclaiming public space to mass mobilizations such as the G8 summit at Gleneagles. This paper, written by action researchers heavily implicated in the social centre movement, critically examines the experience of social centres so far and offers some thoughts on their future development.

The new urban enclosures

The ongoing crisis of global capitalism has served only to intensify the past four decades of neoliberal restructuring of cities across the world. In this paper I critically reflect on a literary aspect of the neoliberalising city academic discourse that is too often left untheorised or underplayed—the prevalence of contemporary urban enclosure. My aim is twofold: to synthesise theories of old and new enclosure with more familiar understandings of neoliberal urban processes; and to then apply this framework to the British housing experience of the past four decades. In doing so, I argue that enclosure is not only a metaphor for contemporary urban policy and processes but also provides an explanation for what is taking place. The paper concludes with some brief thoughts on how todays ‘urban commoners’ might contest the new urban enclosures by finding common cause around visions and practices of a ‘new urban commons’.

Introduction: Neoliberal housing policy – time for a critical re-appraisal

This paper introduces the themed section of Critical Social Policy on social housing, privatization and neoliberalism. In tracing the key elements in the development of privatization and residualization since 1979, it argues that these can only be fully understood as part of a wider neoliberalizing agenda, an agenda that is driven by a particular class project. The paper also seeks to re-assert the importance of a critical approach to successive decades of social housing policies in the devolved UK, arguing that the classed basis of housing privatization policies has been largely overlooked by academics in favour of an evolutionary and ‘modernizing’ framework which isolates developments in social housing provision from other wider shifts in social welfare and in labour markets. Understanding such processes, it is claimed, is a necessary step in the development of a more socially just and sustainable form of housing provision.

The return of class war conservatism? Housing under the UK Coalition Government

The May 2010 election of a Conservative-dominated UK coalition government unleashed an unprecedented austerity drive under the auspices of ‘deficit reduction’ in the wake of the global financial crisis. This article focuses on housing policy to show how the ‘cuts’ are being used as an ideological cover for a far-reaching, market-driven restructuring of social welfare policy that amounts to a return of what Ralph Miliband called ‘class war conservatism’. We revisit the main ideological contours and materialist drivers of Thatcherism as a hegemonic strategy, discussing the central role played by housing privatization in the neoliberal project that was continued, but not completed, by New Labour. We then discuss the Coalition’s assault on the housing welfare safety net it inherited, arguing this has rapidly shut down alternative directions for housing and represents a strategic intervention designed to unblock and expand the market, complete the residualization of social housing and draw people into an ever more economically precarious housing experience in order to boost capitalist interests.

Speculating on London's housing future

Londons housing crisis is rooted in a neo-liberal urban project to recommodify and financialise housing and land in a global city. But where exactly is the crisis heading? What future is being prepared for Londons urban dwellers? How can we learn from other country and city contexts to usefully speculate about Londons housing future? In this paper, we bring together recent evidence and insights from the rise of what we call ‘global corporate landlords’ (GCLs) in ‘post-crisis’ urban landscapes in North America and Europe to argue that Londons housing crisis—and the policies and processes impelling and intervening in it—could represent a key moment in shaping the citys long-term housing future. We trace the variegated ways in which private equity firms and institutional investors have exploited distressed housing markets and the new profitable opportunities created by states and supra-national bodies in coming to the rescue of capitalism in the USA, Spain, Ireland and Greece in response to the global financial crisis of 2007–2008. We then apply that analysis to emerging developments in the political economy of Londons housing system, arguing that despite having a very low presence in the London residential property market and facing major entry barriers, GCLs are starting to position themselves in preparation for potential entry points such as the new privatisation threat to public and social rented housing.

The Private Finance Initiative in English Council Housing Regeneration: A Privatisation too Far?

Despite the enormous body of scholarship that has tracked the transformation of social housing from the ‘public housing model’ of the welfare state era to the ‘social housing model’ of today, large gaps remain in our understanding of this shift. This paper addresses on one such vacuum—the controversial use of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as part of the Labour Governments Decent Homes programme in England. Focusing on ‘council housing’ schemes, a critical overview is presented of the housing PFI experience so far. The main purpose is to understand the motives and drivers behind the use of PFI in housing at different scales, assess the progress of the national PFI programme and explore the significant issues, controversies and challenges encountered. The paper concludes that PFI has proved to be more complicated and expensive than its proponents predicted and should be discontinued in the social housing sector.

Grounding accumulation by dispossession in everyday life: The unjust geographies of urban regeneration under the Private Finance Initiative

Purpose – This paper aims to ground Harvey’s (2003) top-down theory of “accumulation by dispossession” in the everyday lives of people and places with specific focus on the role of law. It does this by drawing upon the lived experiences of residents on a public housing estate in England (UK) undergoing regeneration and gentrification through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Design/methodology/approach – Members of the residents association on the Myatts Field North estate, London, were engaged as action research partners, working with the researchers to collect empirical data through surveys of their neighbours, organising community events and being formally interviewed themselves. Their experiential knowledge was supplemented with an extensive review of all associated policy, planning, legal and contractual documentation, some of which was disclosed in response to requests made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Findings – Three specific forms of place-based dispossession were identified: th...

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.

Refused Asylum Seekers as the Hyper-Exploited

This chapter delves into the worlds of refused asylum seekers — worlds too often characterised by conditions of destitution. This destitution does not simply ‘occur’; rather it is produced and enforced through immigration policies and the structural erosion of welfare support. Successive UK governments have systematically tiered entitlement for migrant groups and undermined the basic rights of asylum seekers who from 1999 onwards have had diminishing financial support and accommodation. In 2002, permission to work for asylum seekers who had not received an initial decision on their claim within six months was removed as employment was considered a ‘pull factor’ encouraging unfounded asylum claims (Bloch and Schuster, 2002). In 2003, a cashless voucher system (known as Section 4 support) was introduced for refused asylum seekers temporarily unable to leave the UK. Both were deliberately punitive to deter continuing residence in the UK. While there is a lack of evidence substantiating any effect of assumed ‘pull factors’ for seeking asylum in the UK, the government insists that denying work rights is central to deterrence of people claiming asylum. It is now widely recognised that refused asylum seekers routinely experience enforced destitution due to the intentional restriction of their rights (Crawley et al., 2011; Bloch, 2013, see also Vickers in this volume).