Hyper-precarious lives

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…

• JR
  Joseph Rowntree Foundation
• UO
  University of Oxford
• IL
  International Labour Organization
• EA
  Economic and Social Research Council

  Awards: RES-062-23-, ES/I008349/1, ES/K005413/1, RES-062-23