Precarious lives: Asylum seekers and
refugees’ experiences of forced labour
Dr Louise Waite (School of Geography, University of Leeds)
Dr Stuart Hodkinson (School of Geography, University of Leeds)
Prof Peter Dwyer (Centre for Social Justice Research, University of Salford)
Dr Hannah Lewis (School of Geography, University of Leeds)
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Presentation outline
1. Defining and problematising ‘forced labour’
2. The link between immigration and forced
labour
3. Asylum seekers and refugees
4. The concept of ‘precarity’ and connections
to resistance and organisation
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1. Forced labour
• Forced labour → a violation of fundamental human rights
in international and national law.
• ILO Forced Labour Convention 1930 (No.29) and the
European Court of Human Rights:
– All work or service which is exacted from any person under the
menace of any penalty and for which the said person has not
offered themselves voluntarily.
• Skrivankova (2010) introduces a continuum of exploitation
and interventions, ranging from decent work to extreme
exploitation and covering both labour law and criminal law.
• UK’s new criminal offence of forced labour; section 71 of
the Coroners and Justice Act 2009.
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2. Immigration and forced labour
• Close connection between immigration and forced labour.
• Labour and immigration policy increasingly tied through
‘managed migration’ → state purpose to draw in and expel
migrants when required (Kundnani, 2007).
• Since 1970s increased flexibility & deregulation of
economy → pursuit of enhanced global competitiveness.
Parallel growth of informal economy. Growth of subcontracting and ‘contingent’ workforce. ‘Flexicurity’?
• Civic stratification and migrants’ rights (Morris, 2002) →
frames relationship between immigration status and
access to labour market.
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3. Asylum seekers and refugees (AS/R)
• Our focus is on AS/R as a group of migrants whose
susceptibility to and experience of forced labour in the UK
remain under researched and largely ignored
asylum seekers
since July 2002 have been barred from employment;
eligible for no-choice basic accommodation and 70%
Income Support if destitute
refused asylum
seekers
will only receive state support if they agree to return but
cannot be deported; otherwise have 28 days to leave
accommodation and become destitute / homeless with
limited free healthcare
refugees
Have right to work and claim welfare as UK citizen for 5
years
• Importance and disciplining power of socio-legal status
• and gender (domestic exploitation/servitude)
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Asylum Process
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Push-Pull Forces on AS/R Informal Work
Material
Poverty
income
Solicitors
fees
Immaterial
No
cash
Debts
Limited
choice of
shops
Limited
volunteering
/ training
chances
Excluded
from work
Boredom,
low selfworth
Informal
economy
Lack basic
necessities
Limited
educational
chances
Children’s
needs
Poor
housing
Daily fear of
detention,
deportation
Remittances
Pressure
from family
back home
Cut off
from
society
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Burnett and Whyte (2010). The wages of fear: risk,
safety and undocumented work
• Study of 14 refused, destitute AS and their experiences of
forced labour in UK finds variety of factors pushes / pulls
AS into underground economy
• Highly temporised, Just-in-Time-When-Required workforce
performing hyper-intensive, sweated labour, long hours for
poverty wages with ‘no pay’ common
• ‘Structured vulnerability’ and disciplinary power of labour
market, labour process, legal status and destitution
– Wage manipulation and theft
– Slavery / forced labour
– Violence
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4. Precarity
• Precarity: a useful neologism?
• Limited attention by geographers (e.g. Ettlinger, 2007) in
comparison to those writing from labour relations, feminist
philosophical, sociological and anthropological
perspectives (e.g. Butler, 2004; Tsianos and
Papadopoulos, 2006; Anderson, 2007).
• Referring literally to those experiencing precariousness,
precarity invokes life worlds characterised by uncertainty
and insecurity. But beyond this contestation: both a
condition and a possible point of mobilisation.
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• Precarity as a life-condition – a result of a generalised
societal malaise and insecurity (e.g. Bourdieu, 1998,
2000; Butler, 2004; Neilson and Rosseter, 2005).
• Precarity as related to the specific conditions of
labour markets, especially those in advanced
capitalist economies. Associated with intensifying
trajectories of neoliberalism and globalisation and
increased mobility.
• Marginal and casualised employment condition as
prevalent form of contemporary labour relations in
post-Fordism. Flexploitation.
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• Experiences of precarity
creating possibly rallying points
for resistance. Political
potential.
• Examples - ‘Precarity Map’,
‘McStrikers’ in France,
‘Precarity Ping Pong, ‘Precarias
a la Deriva’, ‘Frassanito’, ‘San
Precario’.
• Transnational / trans-sectoral
bodies using similar tactics to
‘new labour internationalisms’.
Concept of precarity linked to a
potentially disruptive sociopolitical identity that is tied to a
new brand of labour activism.
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• Migrant workers as a
precariat? A political force
capable of collective action
and revolt against neoliberal
capitalism?
• Foti (2005:3), “The precariat is
to postindustrialism as the
proletariat was to
industrialism”.
• Hardt and Negri (2004) –
migrants as a ‘special
category’ within the ‘multitude’
who embody revolutionary
potential.
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Resistance and organisation?
• Characteristics of precarious labourers mitigating against the
‘celebratory’ imagining of migrants. Trans-spatial movements as a
deterrent to territorialised syndicalism (traditional unions).
• Compounding this; the highly precarious / undocumented / shadow
economy positioning of asylum seekers and refugees in forced
labour.
• Wills (2005); organising in low-paid service sectors.
• Rogaly (2009); the agency of unorganised temporary migrant
workers.
• Coe & Jordhus-Lier (2010); agency as relational and importance of
labour’s positionality with respect to global production networks,
the state, the community and labour market intermediaries.
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