Embodied labours: migrants in Greater London

1
Embodied labours migrants in Greater Londons
service sector

• May 2008
• Linda McDowell
• School of Geography, University of Oxford

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GeNet ESRC Gender Equality Network

• Theme 1 Pathways to Adult Attainment
• Changing Occupational Careers of Women and Men
• Biographical Agency and Developmental Outcomes
• Gendered Pathways to Adulthood
• Theme 2 Resources, Gender, Ethnic and Class
  Inequalities
• Gender, Time Allocation and the 'Wage Gap'
• Within-household Inequalities and Public Policy
• Gender, Ethnicity, Migration and Service
  Employment
• Class and Gender, Employment and Family
• Theme 3 Policy Responses to Gender Inequalities
• Addressing Gender Inequality through Corporate
  Governance
• Tackling Inequalities in Work and Care Policy
  Initiatives and Actors at the EU and UK levels

3
Aims of Project 6

• How a diverse migrant labour force is
• assembled
• segmented
• maintained
• how hierarchies of difference and
  desirability/suitability for different types of
  servicing jobs within the migrant labour force
  are produced and maintained, creating
  inequalities

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Context of the research

• Growth in the service sector feminisation and
  increasing polarisation of the labour market
• Rise of poor work and multiple job holding
• Use of agency and sub-contract labour is
  expanding in flexible labour markets
• Increasing spatial reach of agencies new
  international division of labour in most local of
  servicing work where co-presence and face to
  face contact is essential
• Nature of interactive work body work so personal
  characteristics (gender, skin colour, language)
  are crucial intersectionality and inequality
• New migrants

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A8 migration from 2004

• EU accession states May 2004 Czech Republic,
  Hungary, Poland Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia,
  Estonia, plus Cyrus and Malta
• EU accession states January 2007 Bulgaria and
  Romania
• Different rights
• New points based system- growing significance of
  whiteness

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Extent of immigration

• Government estimates 5-15,000
• Probable entrants between 600,000 and a million
• No exit data
• WRS (not required after a year of continuous
  employment)
• Age, gender and sex

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What we did

• Case study of public and private sector
  organisation with reliance on migrants labour
  force and use of agencies
• 60 interviews in each organisation public
  sector WCH private BI
• Interviews with personnel
• Interviews with owners/managers of 10 agencies

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Where

• West London (Wills et al in East London
• High percentage of foreign born population,
  especially of Asian origin
• Tight job market according to WCH report
  probably the most competitive in London in 2006
  when we stated interviewing
• Teaching hospital upmarket hotel, part of an
  international chain

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Focus of argument today

• Agency workers as sub-set of most exploited (EU
  Directive CBI/TUC deal)
• Their characteristics
• Comparison between BI and WCH
• Implication divisions of labour within migrant
  population
• Competition with local workers especially BME
  workers

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Why agencies matter

• As Peck and Theodore (2001) argued, employment
  agencies are thus both empirically and
  theoretically interesting as they are active
  institutional agents in the remaking of labour
  market norms and conventions, brokering as they
  do between under-employed workers on the one hand
  and would-be employers of contingent labour on
  the other, while turning a profit in the process
  (p 474).
• Agencies supply workers employed under fixed
  term contracts to meet changing needs, providing
  what Booth, Dolado and Frank (2002) et al refer
  to as a buffer stock (p 182) to meet changes in
  the operating environment, including peaks of
  demand.

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Why they matter now

• the only extra jobs at present in the UK
  economy are for temporary staff and the
  self-employed. This growth in contract working
  is almost certainly a reflection of the increased
  supply of migrant workers from Central and
  Eastern Europe Philpott, chief economist at the
  Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
  (CIPD 2007)
•  Already mentioned CBI/TUC agreement

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Types of agencies

• the market which agencies construct and operate
  within is polarised between bottom end, low
  status and back street agencies, supplying
  warm bodies, and high status and highly skilled
  specialist workers for professional positions.
• Parallels the wider pattern of polarisation
  emerging in service sector economies, between
  high status and credentialised workers in good
  jobs, and the generic, unskilled warm bodies,
  in poorly paid and insecure work.Former operate
  on large scale, often mulit-national in scope,
  workers often recuited in home country later
  more likely to be smaller-scale and to recruit
  here, although not always, as I shall show.

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Agency workers at WCH and BI

• Total number 22 at Bi and 23 at WCH
• Warm bodies 20 at BI and 17 at WCH in bottom end
  catering, cleaning, security etc
• 16 different nations represented 9 out of 20 at
  BI from Eastern Europe (mainly A8) only one from
  17 at WCH
• BI recruits bodies through agency WCH buys a
  service from Greenspan

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The comparison

• New migrant labour force at BI East European and
  Indian, temporary, here in the main for training
  language and management skills
• Older post-colonial labour force at WCH in
  country longer, lnger job tenure, wanted to stay
  both in UK and in NHS (though worked for an
  agency not NHS employees)

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Young migrants in BI

• It was a quick decision, I had a call from London
  from a Polish-owned employment agency, . . . .
  I bought a one way ticket from Warsaw . . . it
  was very cheap, but it was a bus, so 34 hours. .
  . . I arrived Saturday morning. I had to go to
  sign the contract with the agency that was
  Monday, the next day I came to work.
• (Stanislaw Polish, previously in the army, early
  20s)

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Migrants in WCH

• I am from Afghanistan. I came through India and
  Russia and I dont know where else. It took many
  months and I was not sure where I was at first.
• I have job cleaning at WCH and I work in a bus
  garage.

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Hafizs job search

• My friend working down in this car parking so I
  come because I come sometime, I say if you help
  me, so if you know someone, so if I find some job
  here. So after they told the supervisor, so the
  supervisor said okay if I have something, I can
  tell you but I cant promise. I said no
  problem, please if you help me, I want, Id like
  a job here at this hospital, so after they said
  okay. Im waiting about one and a half months,
  still with the agent. After they called me and
  said bring your paper and come here. So I come.
  . . . fill my form, everything, so I start my job
  about the last Sunday. . . . I do the cleaning in
  the ward, cleaning, everything I do. I am happy,
  I am really happy, . . . I love this job.

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Role of agencies and sub-contractors

• check references
• undertake work histories
• do the requisite police checks and WRS
• arrange occupational health clearance and visa
  where needed
• advise on living conditions, setting up bank
  accounts etc
• if appropriate, interview applicants

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Changing pool of potential recruits

• theres quite a lot of the new European states
  now, the Polish, Latvians, Lithuanians.
• Youve got the WRS so we have to make sure they
  apply for that which is time-consuming. We give
  them a month to apply but then we have got to
  chase them when they dont apply. They have to
  apply every time they go to a different job and
  its 70 a go. I dont think they are really
  educated on the importance of it. You ask some of
  them the Lithuanian, the Polish they dont
  know what the WRS is, so I have to sit here and
  explain to the best of my ability and to the
  point where I now have a stack of application
  forms in my drawer. You have to chase and chase
  and chase so its a bit difficult. Its hard to
  manage.
• Claire, agency employee recruiting in hospitality
  sector

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Advantages for BI and WCH

• Probation for permanent employment
• Flexible
• Easy to sack
• Could use them to discriminate

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• Well, when it is BI staff and if its busy or
  not you
• have to give them the job. If they do 10 rooms or
  
• 16, you are paying them for 16 because this is
• what the contract is saying. If you have agency,
• how many rooms they do, that much you are
• paying them. Its saving. Its simple. And when
  we
• dont need them, we say youre not working
• tomorrow and thats it. This is why theyre
  using
• the agency, but it is horrible
• Sylvia, BI Housekeeping Deputy Manager

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Interactive work in the hotel

• We look for someone whose got a very strong
  aptitude to interact with customers because
  that's key, that's what hospitality is about,
  whether that be on the front desk, whether that
  be in the restaurant, whether that be conference
  banqueting, even housekeeping, it's really
  important. ... We look for somebody who has a
  style basically, the kind of person that when you
  first meet, youll warm to because that's the
  image that Bellman has. It's all about
  hospitality, and we also look for someone whos
  very well presented, has made an effort.

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Not got what it takes

• We went to Hungary first and then to Latvia but
  so far it hasnt been very successful not like
  the Indian recruitment. There wasnt the actual
  aptitude I was talking about, the smiley, bubbly
  hospitality attitude, is not as prevalent in the
  people we interviewed, they're a lot more serious
  . . . , so there wasnt a natural what I call
  personality or that demonstration of Im here
  for the customer, so that was a little bit of a
  concern.

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Aggressive Poles

• The main problem is language barriers and also
  cultural barriers sometimes, because perhaps what
  I consider to be rude or abrupt, another person
  might not see that as being rude or abrupt
  because thats the way they would generally
  converse with each other. . . I think the Polish
  people are quite headstrong, and so rather than
  just getting on with it, they ask why? Why?
  Why?, then you gave to explain, explain, explain
  and sometimes you just want to get on with it.

25
Compliant Vietnamese

• we used to have Vietnamese people before and the
  Vietnamese people are very soft and compliant.
• Parallels with Indian staff seen as having a
  heritage of service
• Feminisation of Asian men

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Indirect discrimination

• I have asked the agency staff not to give me any
  more Polish staff, . . . because I think if I
  have a whole Polish staff it would be just too
  much to handle

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An older labour force at WCH

• At WCH, we interviewed agency workers from
  Afghanistan, India, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Malaysia,
  Algeria and Turkey but only one person from the
  A8 countries.
• Been in country longer and planned to stay
• More people of colour

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Minority workers in Greenspan

• The hospital and the sub-contractor Greenspan
  used to recruit, from an older, long-standing
  migrant population in the locality, predominantly
  British Asian women most of whom had come to
  Britain between 1968 and the mid 1970s, - these
  ladies are in their late 60s now, so they have
  been here quite a long time - to more recent
  migrants including Chinese, Afro-Caribbean
  (sic), Portuguese, Polish, Irish this is where
  it all starts to change, and now definitely with
  the East Europeans, thats definitely created a
  big change although she told us East Europeans
  were hard to place in the hospital because of
  poor English (Agency owner who recruited for
  Greenspan).

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Same old gender divisions of labour

• Women as care assistants and cleaners
• Men as doorstaff, heavy cleaning, in BI waiters
  and kitchen staff
• Relies on stereotypical characteristics of
  femininity and masculinity

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Caring in WCH

• Some people they havent got a family and like
  myself I was giving more care to the people who
  havent anyone, because they dont have a visitor
  they dont have anyone looking after, doing right
  thing, because some people come in and check, you
  know? But some people havent got that and that
  I think in myself I was saying, you know make
  more effort and we do the care, because I will do
  this and we will talk to them. That can be hard,
  it was emotionally, it was very emotional.
  (Habiba, Health Care Assistant, female, Somalia)

31
Care work by cleaners at WCH

• If they're short of staff, they will ask me if I
  can go on the ward to help the patients ...I
  really love old people, I love to help old people
  as well. Yeah, I have a pity for old people, so I
  go there and Ill make them breakfast and tidy
  the ward, like mop and clean the sink and going
  in their room, clean anything, check toilets,
  soap and stuff, so Im used to itI like caring,
  sometimes I go there and I sing for them. (Amber,
  cleaner, female, Jamaica)

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Cleaning at BI

• Valentina, an agency worker, originally from
  Russia, describes her daily routine I should
  make ready my trolley. Put in chemicals. I take a
  key, I go upstairs, I knock in the door for
  sleeping. I start cleaning. Change beds,
  bathrooms, dust. . . . I should be quick and it
  is difficult.
• Differs from hospital cleaning as (usually) no
  co-presence and so invisible

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Dirty work at BI

• It was a very dirty room, one hour is cleaning
  this room because everything is oh my God!
  Family, its one room and family, the children
  many children and all the rooms its oh my God!
  (Teresa, Polish agency worker)
• Paid to clean 16 rooms in a shift

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Discussion

• Migrant labour market segmentation neither starts
  nor finishes in the local labour market where it
  occurs
• Thus the most local of work (body/caring
  labour) is organised across multiple scales
• Consequences for workers/EO policies, labour
  market policy.
• bodies as products
• Hierarchy of desirability
• insecurity
• Flexibility
• Protection
• Competition with local and BME workers (British
  jobs for British workers)
• Implications for managed migration policies
• citizenship
• Regulations
• GATS

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Papers out

• Economic Geography 83 (1), 2007
• Global Networks 8, 1 2008
• Journal of Ethnic and Migrant Studies, later this
  year
• Forthcoming
• Brit.J. Of Industrial Relations late 2008
• JEMS 2009
• Gender, Work and Organisation 2009
• Geoforum