Abstract
Over recent decades, political and economic changes have had far-reaching impacts on labour migration and the way it is governed across the globe. Driven by deregulated labour markets and regional economic partnerships such as the European Union (EU), migration patterns have shifted and a precarisation of labour has emerged. This is the focus of the discussion in Migration, Precarity and Global Governance – Challenges and Opportunities for Labour, edited by Carl-Ulrik Schierup, Ronaldo Munck, Branka Likić-Brborić and Anders Neergaard. In this volume, well-known scholars in the field of migration and labour market studies analyse central aspects of contemporary labour migration, including its fragmentation and informalisation, as well as the responses to it of trade unions and civil society. By identifying migrants and racialised workers as particularly marginalised groups in a globalised labour market, the book aims to highlight interesting intersections between a mobile and flexible mass of workers, and a labour movement pinioned by its traditionally ambiguous relationship to foreign workers. The goal is to contribute to existing literature on precarious labour and the informalisation of labour relations in general, and more specifically, the identified problem of including migrant workers in trade union solidarity.
The book is divided into three main parts. The five chapters that follow the introductory chapter discuss migration and labour, thus providing the reader with insights into recent global developments, both economic and political, and their impact on the way labour and migration is governed. The five chapters of the second part emphasise trade unions’ historical and contemporary relationship to migrant workers, including recent positive trade union trajectories of reaching out to groups of migrant workers. The four chapters of the third part continue the focus on these recent trajectories, highlighting alternative social movements and a broader civil society engagement as vital in solving contemporary problems.
Drawing on Karl Polanyi’s notion of a societal countermovement, the introductory chapter, written by the editors, draws attention to a growing social movement consisting of trade unions and civil society initiatives influenced by the United Nations agenda claiming universal rights for all. Intending to represent the migrant precariat, this movement is portrayed as an alternative to the global hegemony of neo-liberal governance, influencing possibilities of de-commodifying migrant labour, and thereby also regulating the market. Although useful, the authors argue that depicting resistance to contemporary globalisation through a Polanyian lens is challenging, and a general theme running through the book concerns the heterogeneous composition of this countermovement. I find the reflections on the movement’s internal power structures of particular interest, especially considering the persistent focus on market-driven responses to issues surrounding the precarisation of labour.
Conceptualising this precarisation, as well as exploring the growth of the precariat as a social class is extensively outlined in the first part of the book. Also, various twentieth-century labour migration systems are analysed to illustrate changes under a neo-liberal regime, convincingly arguing that cheap labour is key to understanding a segmented labour market. Segmentation may also lead to the racialisation of workers. It is argued that there has never been a homogenous working class, and that workers have always been separated by gender, ethnicity, age or legal status. In her chapter, Bridget Anderson explores the close relationship between class and migrant status, linking it to discussions of work and how work is defined. Her main argument is that employment in its normative sense is determined by social relations rather than by the nature of the task, resulting in further segmentation of migrants, racialised workers, and other marginalised groups in an already stratified labour market.
Racialisation is also central to the second part of the book. Defined as the complex construction of physical appearance and cultural differences, racialisation provides an understanding of the historical dilemma of trade union solidarity and foreign workers. Originating in a society pervaded by the idea of a homogenous nation-state built on cultural and ethnic unity, trade union solidarity has traditionally struggled to organise foreign workers. This is demonstrated in Anders Neergaard’s provoking chapter on trade union dilemmas in the Swedish labour market. Through an illustration of the informalisation of labour relations across sectors, Neergaard highlights the ambiguity of trade unions’ interest in the periphery of the labour market, where racialised groups of workers and migrants predominate. As a result of economic globalisation and decreasing political influence, Swedish trade unions find themselves in a position where they need the employers more than the employers need them, making trade unions less prone to challenge informal and precarious practices in peripheral sectors. However, according to Neergaard, the same processes of informalisation, together with changing migration patterns, represent a palpable risk of institutionalising precariousness across sectors. This also influences trade unions’ willingness to reach out to these previously neglected groups of workers.
Together with other solidarity movements and supranational organisations, recent positive trade union trajectories constitute what the authors refer to as the Polanyian countermovement. The potential of this movement to influence and challenge current global governance regimes is explored critically in the third part of the book. Discussions involve aspects of accountability and the mobilisation of migrants’ rights, and employ the notion of bottom-up governance, that is, implementing social rights with the intention of shedding light on migrants’ everyday experiences, while also promoting social justice on a global level. Yet, as explained by Likić-Brborić and Schierup in chapter twelve, efforts have so far been ineffective and inevitably coupled with market driven solutions. This asymmetric dualism – where social rights are subordinate to free trade – is symptomatic, not only of regulatory labour markets or migration policies, but also of the current neo-liberal hegemony as a whole.
To conclude, even though it occasionally depicts an almost dystopian image of the contemporary labour market in which powerful actors capitalise on existing inequalities, this book is an encouraging contribution to existing research. Useful for both students and researchers across a wide range of disciplines, it provides opportunities to reflect on the importance of migrant workers in the current economic system, while at the same time emphasising their precariousness and vulnerability. Illustrated in a clear and vibrant manner throughout, it effectively links the impact of colonial history with present-day structural inequalities, inviting the reader to further undress various forms of normativity permeating labour market politics and migration.