The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of Precarity

Migrant workers in the West are at the frontline of the precarious condition that is coming to dominate social and economic life in neoliberal societies. Yet despite the highly insecure and exploitative working conditions they routinely face, labour mobilizations by precarious workers are rare.

In this immersive portrait of the daily realities of precarious migrant labour, Panos Theodoropoulos found work in Glasgow’s warehouses, factories and kitchens to uncover the ways that precarity is lived and contested. Connecting the realms of structure, subjectivity and culture, his analysis shows that precarity not only dictates workers’ labour conditions, but socializes them in an individualist, survival-oriented struggle that erodes solidarities and enforces its own neoliberal logic. Crucially, however, precarity and the wider neoliberal culture are unable to erase workers’ material awareness and experience of class injustice. This points to the possibility of forging strong connections and methods of resistance, firmly grounded in the lives and communities of precarious workers.