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The Precarious Migrant Worker
The Socialization of Precarity
Panos Theodoropoulos (Author)
9781509564989, Polity Press
Hardback, published 1 May 2025
224 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.454 kg
"This engaging ethnography of low-wage migrants highlights the contradiction between workers' acute consciousness of exploitation and the conspicuous absence of unions or social movements in their communities. Against this bleak backdrop, Theodoropoulos dissects the logic of migrants' reliance on individualistic survival strategies rather than collective mobilization."
Ruth Milkman, City University of New York Graduate Center and former President of the American Sociological Association
"This is a Book of the Year for me [...] Brilliantly researched and original."
Hsiao-Hung Pai
"This text can be a difficult read at times, not due to any academic elitism, but to the contrary because it expresses so clearly the scars of capitalism on real people's lives."
IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) Book Recommendation
"a valuable contribution"
Labour Hub
"The Precarious Migrant Worker has many qualities that position it to become a classic of 21st century ethnography"
Work, Employment and Society
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.
Introduction Chapter 1: 'We Were Always Migrants' Chapter 2: The Precarious Condition Chapter 3: The Socialization of Precarity Chapter 4: The Precarious Migrant Subject Chapter 5: Solidarities and Resistances Conclusion: Towards Community Embeddedness
Subject Areas: Economics [KC]
