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Migrant subjectivities and temporal flexibility of East‐Central European labour migration to the United Kingdom
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David McCollum
Population, Space and Place, Volume: 27, Issue: 8
Swansea University Author:
Sergei Shubin
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DOI (Published version): 10.1002/psp.2508
Abstract
This paper seeks to broaden existing understandings of migrant worker flexibility drawing on the data from the two ethnographic studies of low-wage employers and Eastern European migrants in Scotland. It focuses on the temporal aspects of flexibility production in employment discourse and temporal e...
| Published in: | Population, Space and Place |
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| ISSN: | 1544-8444 1544-8452 |
| Published: |
Wiley
2021
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| Online Access: |
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| URI: | https://cronfa.swan.ac.uk/Record/cronfa57464 |
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| Abstract: |
This paper seeks to broaden existing understandings of migrant worker flexibility drawing on the data from the two ethnographic studies of low-wage employers and Eastern European migrants in Scotland. It focuses on the temporal aspects of flexibility production in employment discourse and temporal expectations about flexible migrant workers. Our findings reveal double movement of interruption and re-making of temporal flexibility, which challenges directional expectations about time and unsettles the assumed connectivity between flexibility’s temporal elements. Uncertainty and instability of migration and employment frameworks undermine the attempts of employers and migrants to manage time, to develop continuous portfolio careers and coherent temporal horizons. Furthermore, contested temporal expectations about flexible migrant workers create fragmented and fractured ‘flexiworkers’ that do not fit within the existing temporal frameworks of signs, routines and rhythms. The paper suggests re-orientation of flexibility debates beyond temporal measurement, outside familiar temporal structures and towards re-definition of flexible worker identities. |
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| Keywords: |
Eastern Europe; flexibility; labour migration; low-waged migrants; migrant worker; time; UK |
| College: |
Faculty of Science and Engineering |
| Funders: |
Economic and Social Research Council, ES/J007374/1; RES-625-28-0001 |
| Issue: |
8 |