The Precarious Migrant Worker

Migrant workers in the West are at the frontline of the precarious condition that is coming to dominate 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 Glasgows 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. It is on this basis that the foundations of new forms of struggle must be laid. Blending interviews, ethnographic notes and social theory, The Precarious Migrant Worker offers a unique glimpse into our increasingly precarious social reality and will be a valuable resource for scholars, students and activists interested in issues of migration, precarity and resistance.