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MMU 12th May 2010

Migration, Immigration Controls, and the Making of Precarious

Workers

Bridget Anderson

Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS)Oxford University

British Jobs for British Workers

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Overview

• Immigration controls are moulds. They shape types of labour with particular relations to employers and labourmarkets

• Developments in UK immigration policy and rhetoric

• The migrant as ‘precarious worker’• Migratory processes and precarity• Denaturalising immigration controls

– Categories of entrant– Imposition of employment relations– Construction of institutionalised uncertainty

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Recent Developments

Failure to take on the people traffickers… leaves vulnerable…people at the mercy of organised criminals. But equally importantly, the fact that many immigrants… end up in shadowy jobs in the grey economy undermines the terms and working conditions of British workers. That’s not fair… Resentment of it breeds discontent and racism… That is why the time is now right to tackle the exploitation underpinning illegal immigration. We have to tackle not only the illegal trafficked journeys but also the illegal jobs at the end of them.

John Reid MP Foreward to Enforcing the Rules, 2007

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Recent Developments

• ‘The biggest shake up of the immigration system in 45 years’

• Ending in Tiers:– Tier 1 highly skilled– Tier 2 skilled– Tier 3 low skilled– Tier 4 students– Tier 5 youth mobility and temporary workers.

• May 2004 EU Enlargement• Legislation on employing ‘illegal’ immigrants

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Is Prince Philip a migrant? (Is Prince Charles a ‘second generation’

migrant?)

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Migrants as “precarious workers”

• Migrants as “precarious workers”:“the concept of precariousness involves instability, lack of protection, insecurity and social or economic vulnerability…. It is some combination of these factors which identifies precarious jobs, and the boundaries around the concept are inevitably to some extent arbitrary”Rodgers and Rodgers 1989

• Atypical and insecure employment and associated weakening of social relations.

• The temporal as well as spatial aspects of migration.

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Migrants as precarious workers

• Certain stages of migration mesh with the temporal requirements of certain types of labour markets

• Agency workers: approx 25% of agency workers in the UK are migrants

• LFS data: recent migrants are more than twice as likely as UK nationals to be in temporary work.

• Whatever the scepticism about the extent of insecure work, migrants are disproportionately concentrated in it.

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Precariousness and migratory processes

• Piore: the temporal nature of migration predisposes migrants to take on low waged, low status and insecure jobs.

• A8 nationals as Piorean. Between Oct. 06 and Sept. 07:– 8.8% earning below adult nmw; 64.7% between

£5.35 and £5.99– 10 top occupations all ‘low skilled’– 40% working in administration, business and

management.– 43% aged 18-24

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Precariousness and migratory processes

• Concentration of migrants in precarious work in part results from migratory processes.

• As people “develop a more permanent attachment, their time horizon expands: instability of employment is no longer a matter of indifference” (Piore)

• Employers’ praise of migrants often related to new arrivals.

• The temporariness of A8 migrants is not state enforceable – unlike non-EU nationals

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Denaturalising immigration controls

• Importance of the institutional immigration framework in shaping and reinforcing temporal impacts.

• Immigration controls work with (and against) migratory processes to produce workers with particular types of relations to employers and the labour market.

• Immigration status as producing illegality, and types of legality– Categories of entrant– Shaping of employment relations– Institutionalising of uncertainty

• NMW enforcement projected costs 2009/10 £8.8 million• In country immigration controls budget £884.3 million

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Categories of entrant

• Immigration as a filter: law and rules can require particular categories of entrant to have certain skills and experience– E.g. Tier 1needs 75 points

• But do not have to be Tier 1 or 2 to legally participate in labour market– Student visa holders: part time work in term

time– Working holidaymaker visa holders: 12 months

of 2 year stay.• 2005: 91,500 work permits; 284,000 students;

56,600 whm

Categories of entrant and production of status

• Immigration controls produce status

• Importance of age, country of origin and, in some cases, marital status.

• Immigration controls – Reinforce processes that mean migrants have

a younger age profile– Reinforce “plasticity” of the workforce– Limiting of settlement process

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Employment relations

• Having entered non-citizens subject to particular conditions depending on their visa status

• PBS “certificate of sponsorship”. Dependence on employer for right to remain in the UK.

• Effectively on fixed term contracts that can be enforced through removal

• Work permit system: 2005 91,500 work permits, 40,300 less than 12 months.

• Combination of temporariness and labour market immobility.

• Citizenship legislation enhances dependence on employers.

Employment relations

• The question of who controls worker mobility?• The Seasonal Agricultural Workers (SAWs) visa• ‘migrant workers are an attractive source of labour to

UK employers because of their work ethos, efficiency and dependency and because, particularly in the case of the SAWS, they provide a source of labour that is guaranteed to remain on farm during the crucial harvest period.’(House of Lords, 2008: 100)

• But inflexibility of work permit/sponsorship, use of precarious labour that “happens” to be migrants

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Institutionalised uncertainty

• Illegality as produced by immigration controls• Precarious work as structurally produced by the

interaction of employment and immigration legislation – the doctrine of illegality.

• Deportability as institutionalised uncertainty.• Who is deportable?• (And who are the offending employers?)

Immigration Controls and Migratory processes

• Focus on illegality as explanation for exploitation – the principal problem becomes bad employers

• Immigration controls as constructing certain types of worker and subjecting them to a high degree of regulation.

• Migratory processes and temporary mindsets mesh with labour market requirements.

• The importance of employment protection irrespective of immigration enforcement.

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Misdirection?

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Current Papers on this Topic

• Anderson, B. (2010) ‘Migration, immigration controls and the fashioning of precarious workers’ Work, Employment and Society 24(2);

• Anderson, B. and Ruhs M. (2010) ‘Migrant workers, who needs them?’ in, eds Ruhs, M. and Anderson, B. Who Needs Migrant Workers: Labour shortages, immigration, and public policy Oxford: OUP

• Lucas R. and Mansfield S. (2010) ‘Use of migrant labour in the hospitality sector’ in, eds Ruhs and Anderson.

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Centre on Migration, Policy and Society

University of Oxford58 Banbury RoadOxfordOX2 6QS