Abstract
This article focuses on “semi-documented” Brazilian migrant delivery riders in London. It uses (in)visibility as a conceptual lens to perform two roles. First, it explores the experiences of this group through the analytical lens of invisibility. In doing so, it demonstrates that in multiple ways, this group does not conform with statistical norms or with the way “invisible” and/or undocumented migrant workers are portrayed in the literature. Second, the article employs the concept of invisibility to critique UK immigration and employment policy in helping to render the presence and of these migrants “invisible.” Accordingly, it argues that the immigration system is “perverse” in its structure and consequences. In response to the perversity of the system, these migrants employ “perverse” forms of social capital to adapt.
Introduction
This article explores the experiences of “semi-documented” (Dias 2009) Brazilian delivery riders who live and work in London. It does this using the analytical lens of (in)visibility. There is a divide in the UK's Brazilian population between those who were, until recently, able to enter and work in the United Kingdom on ancestral European Union passports and those who enter on tourist visas and then work illegally and/or overstay (Dias 2009; Evans 2020). This had led to Dias (2009) classifying this latter group as “semi-documented.” Typically, the semi-documented are younger, are less affluent, and have arrived more recently. Although their presence is recorded, their working practices and lengths of stay remain institutionally invisible, constituting a form of “invisible migration” (Morris-Suzuki 2006; Griffin 2013; Sahu 2022). Through its exploration of how the UK immigration system renders the presence and labour of this group of migrants invisible, the article also engages with the idea of “perversity” in immigration policy and outcomes (Massey 2007; Stobb et al. 2022). In response to the perversity of the immigration system, migrants, in turn, employ “perverse” forms of social capital (McIlwaine 2012) to adapt. In the context of this article, “perverse” signifies policies, laws, or “social relations which may have positive benefits for those within organizations, but negative outcomes for wider communities” (Moser and McIlwaine 2004, 158).
This article takes the following form. Section two reviews (in)visibility in migration literature. It also explores how “perversity” can be employed to critique immigration policies and outcomes.
Section three explains the fieldwork context and methodology. Section four presents the empirical data. It highlights the interlocutors' experiences of (in)visibility and discrimination and the role of “perverse” social capital in their migration project. Section five discusses the conceptual links between (in)visibility, discrimination, and perversity and points to the need for policy reform.
Invisible Migration
Jones et al. (2012, 257) link (in)visibility to absence and presence. They argue that absence and presence are used to “reinforce … power relations, narratives and control over space.” Absence in particular “has a long association of denying others claim to spaces” (Jones et al. 2012, 257). These two terms are not binaries but are instead “co-constituted and co-exist simultaneously” (Jones et al. 2012, 258). They conclude by posing the question “what are the social, political and ethical implications of presence and absence?” (Jones et al. 2012, 262). This article, in part, takes Jones et al.'s question as a starting point. “Invisible migration” often refers to forms of migration that the state does not record. There is overlap with “irregular migration” but, unlike “irregular migration,” “invisible migration” intends to capture the idea that the migration streams in question are not properly acknowledged or that awareness of their existence is low. It is possible to have an irregular migration stream that is highly visible. “Invisible migration” can also refer to historically unacknowledged migration streams (Morris-Suzuki 2006) or to illicit ones related to human trafficking (Sahu 2022). Indeed, “invisibility” can be read in multiple ways; migrants may be invisible to other members of society — working outside of regular hours, away from commercial and residential areas such as in agriculture or industry (Nair 2015), or they may also be actively invisible as “camouflage” (Robinson 2012) — limiting movements and/or staying away from busy areas (Guillermina Núñez and Heyman 2007; McIlwaine 2015). Invisible migration can also refer to inaccurately recorded migration. Around 24 percent of Brazilians in the United Kingdom are logged as entering the United Kingdom on tourist visas (Evans 2020) 1 . They are therefore unlikely to be undocumented in the true sense of the word. However, their visa status often belies their intention and ability to stay and work. It is not only the migrants that construct a situation where they are “invisible,” but also the wider “border apparatus” (Griffin 2013, 32) — the web of institutional and non-institutional actors that create the “border,” and moreover the failure of these border controls to “achieve their ostensible purpose” (Griffin 2013, 16), which renders these migrants invisible. As McIlwaine notes, transnational spaces are “regulated by a range of different immigration regimes that enable or restrict the movement of people” (McIlwaine 2012, 294) and that “invisibility can be enforced from above or invoked from below” (McIlwaine 2015, 168).
The UK immigration regime both enables and restricts migration and thus directly or indirectly contributes to the invisibility of certain migration streams and migrant labor practices. The UK government has long been caught in a bind. Immigration is generally unpopular with their voter base, yet they simultaneously face demand for more immigration from business owners — many of whom may be party donors or otherwise have influence on policy (Meyers 2000; Freeman and Kessler 2008; Facchini and Mayda 2010; Giordani and Ruta 2011). Wills et al. (2009) speak to the result of this conflict between (big) business and voter sentiment writing that migrant workers are “caught in the cross-fire of contemporary capitalism” (Wills et al. 2009, 257). Employers see migrants (regular and irregular) as “a critical source of labour” (Wills et al. 2009, 266) but, at the same time, governments must (at least appear to) discourage their presence.
This often results in what Boswell (2007) calls “intentional incoherence” in immigration policy and outcomes. It also may help to explain why, so often, supposedly more restrictive immigration policies result in an increase in irregular or undocumented and often “invisible” immigration (Massey 2007; Stobb et al. 2022). This has the perverse outcome that although migrants are often able to enter and work irregularly, they feel fear and uncertainty amidst a climate of hostility at the destination (Schreiber 2018). It seems as if immigration policy and rhetoric often rely on creating fear among irregular migrants who are already present in a country, rather than actively preventing them from entering in the first place (ibid.). Perhaps this is to discourage long term settlement and the claim to certain rights as well as to help satisfy the anti-migration sentiment among the voter base. Governments do this while still tacitly acknowledging the “need” for this kind of labor migration simply by the fact that it is allowed to continue and even increase.
Invisible Work
In the context of this article, it is not only the form of migration that is invisibilized (labor migration officially registered as tourism) but migrants” working practices. Hatton (2017) creates theories of “invisible work.” She describes socio-spatial and socio-legal invisibility. “Socio-spatial mechanisms [of invisibility] are in effect when work is economically devalued because it is physically segregated from the socially constructed “workplace” (Hatton 2017, 343). In the context of this article, work that takes place “on the street” as in the case of delivery riders is subject to this type of socio-spatial invisibilization. Socio-legal invisibility applies to work that is not monitored and regulated by the state. This includes not only non-economic skills and interpersonal skills but also illicit ones. Invisibility is often associated with illegality since illegality creates “exploitable, expendable and invisible labour” (Griffin 2013, 15).
London is dependent on migrant labor to maintain its “global” status (Datta et al. 2012). Migrant labor is also essential to the platform economy (Doorn and Vijay 2021). Governments want to attract “the right kind” of migrants: highly skilled and correctly documented. Yet, they are much less willing to acknowledge that London is also dependent on less visible, unskilled, and often irregular forms of migrant labor too. This undocumented and “invisible” work often receives “no formal recognition” (Nair 2015, 99). London has an “uneasy” (Datta et al. 2012, 390) relationship with migrant workers. There is often a “lack of respect for their work and contributions” (Datta et al. 2012, 395) with many “trapped in low paid work” (Datta et al. 2012, 396) their “contributions remaining invisible and unacknowledged” (ibid.).
Institutionalized Capital and Perverse Capital
Bourdieu (1986, 281) believed that social and cultural capital could be institutionalized meaning that their value could be formally acknowledged by institutions such as states and governing bodies as well as by individuals. For cultural capital this could take the form of a recognized qualification from an educational institution. For social capital, Bourdieu uses “a title of nobility” (ibid.) as an example. By extension, any institutionally recognized title conferring membership to a social group can be framed as institutionalized social capital. The most pertinent example in the context of this article is ownership of an EU passport that many Brazilian migrants can claim by virtue of their membership to particular families. Others have explored how alternative forms of capital such as social can be framed as negative (Portes 1998). Yet, these have largely focused on negative effects on an individual or group of individuals. Conversely, “perverse” social capital pertains to the negative effects on society more widely regardless of any benefit to an individual. It is considerably less theorized than negative social capital. Rubio (1997) seems to have been the first to explicitly explore the concept of perverse social capital. He frames perverse social capital in contrast to “productive” social capital in that perverse social capital is “detrimental to economic efficiency and the welfare of society” (Rubio 1997, 804). The prevalence of perverse social capital is due to the problem that it is “manifested in the reward structure of society” (ibid.). In other words, people are rewarded for deploying it. As Rubio (Rubio 1997, 806) writes, “where crime is both profitable and low-risk, it is easy to predict that many individuals will be inclined to indulge in criminal activity” and this is especially the case when there is a “marked separation … between reality and the legal framework … between the de jure and the de facto norms” (Rubio 1997, 810). In the context of this article, I argue that the perversities inherent in the structure of UK immigration and employment laws create a reward structure that strongly incentivizes the use of perverse social capital.
As Riordan et al. (2022, 3) note, governments often create “uncertain” and “precarious” situations for migrants who, while not explicitly permitted to work, are never the less allowed to remain within the country in “limbo” (ibid.) without much oversight regarding their employment practices. This, combined with the loose regulatory environment that platform economies operate in (Doorn and Vijay 2021), means that migrants can often work within the platform economy. McIlwaine (2012, 296) develops the concept of migrants employing “perverse” forms of capital to achieve their goals. She uses “perverse civic capital” to describe the connections that migrants employ to obtain and use forged passports to enter the United Kingdom. Regarding finding employment in the United Kingdom, many of the interviewees relied on “perverse” forms of capital to perform work that not only were they not permitted to do but appeared as invisible to employment authorities. The UK's immigration and employment regime seems to implicitly encourage the use of “perverse” forms of capital among irregular migrants. Further, the system itself is perverse since it creates a “hostile immigration environment” (McIlwaine and Evans 2022) that encourages (either explicitly or implicitly) xenophobia and discrimination yet also (without acknowledging it) enables irregular migration and employment.
An (In)visible Minority: 2 Latin Americans in London
Research on migrant labor in London often focuses on low paid workers (May et al. 2007; Wills et al. 2009; May et al. 2010). Research on London's Latin American migrant community is no exception. Not only is most of the work low paid but, as McIlwaine notes, “the nature of the work that many Latin Americans undertake in London is also highly invisible” (McIlwaine 2015, 80). Cleaning is by the far the most popular job among Latin Americans (McIlwaine and Bunge 2016). Since this type of work normally takes place before or after typical working hours and inside office buildings, their presence (and indeed their work) is rarely noticed by others.
In his research on Colombian forced migrants in Ecuador, Pugh (2018) writes of an “invisibility bargain.” He argues that the presence of these migrants is tolerated in so far as they are “allowed” to contribute economically while remaining socially and politically “invisible.” In Jones et al.'s (2012) terms, their physical economic presence is negotiated in expectation of social and political absence. This reflects the experiences of London's Latin American population, perhaps especially so in the case of young Brazilian migrants. As Torresan (1994) noted almost three decades ago, although aware of increasing migration streams from Brazil, UK border control had always been rather lenient when it came to policing these arrivals. This was despite her discovery that the Home Office were aware that many Brazilians would work illegally after being granted entry as a tourist (Torresan 1994, 32). Torresan opines that this leniency stems from the tacit acknowledgement by the Home Office that these Brazilians made “suitable” migrant workers being “temporary, replaceable, young and middle class who will not claim any rights or create problems” [translation mine] (Torresan 1994, 35). She thus argues that “the underlying logic of immigration control is located not in control of the demographics of the labor market supposedly deemed saturated, but in the category of immigrants who can fill it” [translation mine] (Torresan 1994, 34).
Until recently, London's Latin Americans were also socially, politically, and ethnically invisible (McIlwaine and Bunge 2016). However, as McIlwaine and Bunge (2016) record, London's Latin American communities have won recent ethnic recognition and thus political visibility. 3 Consequently, “visibility has become an important dimension of the nomenclature of migrants” (McIlwaine 2015, 167). Yet, they are often faced with the contradiction that although they need to be recognized on an institutional level, if they remain unrecognized, “it is often in their interests to remain invisible” (ibid). For example, McIlwaine found that a key “invisibility practice” was to limit “spatial mobility.” 4 This seems to be a common practice among irregular migrants (Guillermina Núñez and Heyman 2007). Ellermann (2010) describes how migrants facing deportation can resist this by making themselves institutionally invisible — discarding their formal identities. Ellermann argues this is an effective form of resistance against states whose powers are limited only to those who it can “see” via official IDs and other forms of documentation. As the empirical section shows, this ability to “hide” from the state via a lack of documentation is utilized by the interlocutors to access employment. This speaks to Robinson's (2012) work that likens invisibility practices to “camouflage” and as a “weapon of the weak.” As McIlwaine (2015) puts it, they are “at once visible and invisible.”
Another defining characteristic of London's Latin population, and in keeping with other literature on London's irregular migrants, is that they often perform low paid work that may not reflect the level of occupation they engaged in at the place of origin. More widely, May et al. (2010, 96) note that many migrants face “significant challenges to their class position” often performing work that they would be overqualified for in the country of origin. In their research on London's Latin American population, McIlwaine and Bunge (2016) found that three quarters of those surveyed earn less than the London living wage.
Methods: London's Brazilian Delivery Riders
Delivery riders have become ubiquitous recently, and Central London, with its preponderance of restaurants, is a popular place for delivery riders to work. I have researched and written about London's Brazilian population for 10 years. As such, I have long noticed that Brazilian (and almost exclusively Brazilian) delivery riders have come to dominate a particular area of central London. 5 That they dominated this area prompted my interest in this research. These riders differ from migrants featured in the literature in important ways. They are highly mobile, highly visible, and highly paid. As Kelly and Lusis (2006, 831) write, “we need ways of understanding immigrant experiences when these deviate from statistical norms.” Despite these differences, they still face obstacles such as discrimination due to their perceived status as “illegal,” as “low paid,” and as “street” workers.
Far from being self-limiting in their mobility, they commute long distances to work in the center, riding e-bikes. Their uniforms distinguish them from other cyclists. In their resting spots, many would be playing music from portable speakers, talking loudly among themselves. One of the field sites was also a popular location for police patrols meaning the riders were not only visible but visible to those with an institutional “interest” in them. Their very existence and presence thus challenges many of the ways that irregular migrant workers are often characterized. Indeed, it is perhaps precisely because of the ways that they challenge these stereotypes and at the moments when migrants assert themselves as visible, crossing “urban borders” (Savio Vammen 2020, 109), that discrimination can become most acute.
The fieldwork on which this article is based occurred in the summer of 2021. I used on-site recruitment to find participants at two sites where Brazilian riders would congregate. As well as constituting a non-elective social group (Brazilian nationals), they were also an elective group via their common profession. As such, I was an “outsider” twice over being neither Brazilian (albeit a Portuguese speaker) nor a delivery rider. As Woodward (2008, 537) notes, “the researcher carries embodied distinctions, for example of gender, race, ethnicity, dis/ability and class, all of which are constitutive elements in the research process.” Gaining access as an “outsider” researcher who is marked by “difference” can be difficult and time consuming (Wolf 1991).
Scholars have shown that simply “hanging out,” informally and for extended periods of time can be an effective way to help to alleviate these differences between researcher and interviewees (Wolf 1991; Woodward 2008; Jordan and Moser 2020). I employed this technique by simply being present at the same locations each day casually making small talk with riders and explaining my general goals before waiting until a later time to ask the same riders more formally (explaining, institutional affiliation, consent, and ethical approval) if I could interview them. Thus, “hanging out” over time proved to be an effective way to gain access and trust. As I became more familiar to the riders, I would then be introduced to others and thus be able to interview multiple participants using “snowball sampling.” Over the course of 3 months, I interviewed a total of 30 participants. Interviews were conducted in Portuguese, 6 transcribed in Portuguese and then translated into English by me. There were a few factors that meant data collection was more chaotic than “usual.” On occasion, an interview with a single person would turn into an impromptu group discussion if nearby friends of the interviewee decided to interject. In addition, many of the interviewees were as curious about my own situation as I was of theirs meaning they would frequently turn the “interview” into more of an informal conversation with me answering as many questions as they asked me. Although I intended to conduct semi-structured interviews, many were unstructured. Participants were sometimes unwilling to be recorded, meaning I would rely on field notes made from memory after the interviews. Finally, since participants were being interviewed during working hours, each individual conversation would rarely last longer than 10 min since the length was limited by the riders” need to take jobs as they appeared on the delivery app. When this happened, I would either wait until they had returned to continue the interview or, if this were not possible, catch up another day. I would often have multiple conversations with the same person over a period of weeks. This allowed me time to reflect on their answers and introduce new topics. In total, 40 transcribed files were uploaded to Nvivo and coded using grounded-theory analysis (Strauss and Corbin 1998). I conducted more than 40 conversations but due to the short time gaps between many conversations, these were recorded in the same audio file with a pause in between and transcribed as one file to NVivo.
Around 50 riders frequented the sites, one interlocutor estimated about 70–80 percent were Brazilian. From my own observations, I would agree this is accurate. Regarding age, most were young, under 30 years old. Only two respondents were over 40. Regarding race, much like in Brazil (but unlike Brazilians with ancestral EU passports), there was a great deal of racial diversity among the riders. Further, riders of all races reported facing discrimination from others (the police, customers, and other members of the public), and there appeared to be no difference in these reports from either white or black riders and no difference in who they felt were discriminating against them (riders reported they faced discrimination from police and customers from diverse racial backgrounds). Further, none mentioned race as a significant factor in the discrimination they experienced. Instead, it was their identity as “street” workers and as “illegal” migrants that they felt were the most salient factors. For these reasons, the empirical section does not include race as a lens of analysis when exploring the discrimination that the riders faced. That is not to suggest that there are no wider racial issues brought up by this article. There is a noticeable racial disparity between those who can claim EU passports and those who rely on other means in the sense that those with EU passports are predominantly of European heritage. This is a disparity that reflects historical structural inequalities in Brazil. Regarding gender, globally, delivery riders are overwhelmingly male, (Benvegnù and Kampouri, 2021; Churchill and Craig, 2019) and this group was no exception. Only two of the riders I observed working in the field site were female. Describing the social class of the riders is a complicated issue not least because attempting to translate the meanings of social class descriptors in Brazil to a UK context can be difficult (Robins, 2018). Most riders were from a broadly similar social class in Brazil: the “C” class. In Brazil, social classes are often categorized from A to E (Kamakura and Mazzon, 2017). Although in Brazil “C” often means “middle-class” (Neri 2014), it is perhaps more accurate to use “lower middle class” or even “working class” in the UK context (Robins 2019). Most were also new to the city, and, for many, Britain was the first country they had visited. Reasons for migrating were usually framed either in economic terms or due to the presence of family members who were already living here. It is worth noting that even though many claimed to intend to stay “for a while.” Those who I interviewed who had been here for longer than 3 years overwhelmingly conveyed their intention to return to Brazil citing reasons such as homesickness, frustration with the limitations of their visa status, and a plan to spend the money they had saved, sometimes linked with a desire to improve their place of origin via investing this money. For ethical reasons I did not directly ask anyone about their visa status. Instead, I would keep the language I used vague and in the third person. Participants would respond in kind. This meant I was able to address this topic without the risk of incriminating any respondents. All fieldwork was cleared for ethical approval by the University of Cambridge. All interviewees gave consent and pseudonyms are used throughout. I also interviewed an immigration lawyer who specializes in assisting Latin American migrants as well as representatives from a London-based Brazilian migrant NGO.
“Perverse” Social Capital: Gaining Entry and the Use of Rented Delivery App Accounts
For those with EU passports, the role of formal and institutionalized forms of social capital is clear. To obtain an EU passport, one must not only have recent European ancestors but also to be from a family of high enough social status that their existence and movements would have been formally recorded both in Brazil and in the country of origin. As Bélanger and Silvey (2020, 3429) state, many who aspire to migrate legally will often be faced with “lengthy, complex, and costly processes” to obtain the correct documentation. Most of the interviewees lacked the capital necessary to acquire an ancestral EU passport (only two Brazilians interviewed possessed an EU passport). Instead, many had to rely on less formal and, at times, “perverse” forms of social capital. UK law states that a Brazilian national may enter the United Kingdom for a period of up to 6 months as a tourist. It is questionable the extent that UK border forces are willing to believe that a young unaccompanied Brazilian who usually speaks little English is planning or indeed able to support themselves for up to 6 months in the United Kingdom without the right to work. Yet, many interviewees reported entry via this method. This was often aided by showing an invitation letter from a friend or relative who was already living and working legally in the country. Here, Roberto, 20, from Bahia explains his experience: My cousin sent us an invitation letter. We were a little afraid of going through immigration … But it was easy … Just passed through, showed my cousin's invitation … it was calm.
“Delivery rider” does not feature as a job category in the employment survey conducted by McIlwaine and Bunge (2016). This is unusual given the apparent size of the industry of rented delivery app accounts in London. This was demonstrated to me by the large numbers (in the thousands) of people in the social media groups set up to allow the buying and selling of delivery app accounts from each other. This suggests that their absence in the survey data is likely because this group did not volunteer to appear in the survey rather than because they are not numerous enough to be recorded. Although researchers in other countries have reported that account renting contravenes the rules of some platforms (Altenried 2021), in an email exchange with one delivery app, I learned that the app company considers their riders to be independent contractors who thus have the right to lend their accounts to others. The onus on ensuring that the substitute has the legal right to work in the United Kingdom is left to the named holder of the account, not the delivery company. As Doorn and Vijay (2021, 3) write, “platform companies are less beholden to state apparatuses … which affords them relatively more leeway to engage in regulatory arbitrage.” It seems the precise rules about what is allowed regarding “lending” accounts to others remains vague in the United Kingdom. Although many reported that the practice had become more difficult, it was still widespread. Altenried (2021) states that in Berlin, account renting was “mostly as a practice of solidarity” with riders rarely having to pay commission to the account owner. Yet in other places, he reports that riders may have to pay as much as 50 percent to the owners (Altenried 2021, 10). Among my interviewees, it seemed that account renting did depend on community solidarity, yet they did also report having to pay commission. Account renting depended on a web of trust and accountability since there is little to prevent the account owner from keeping the money: Paulo: I can rent an account from someone, and then I’ll work. They’ll send me the money the first time to get my trust, the second time they’ll take the money … you’re left with nothing. Interviewer: Is that quite common then? Paulo: There's a handful of scammy people that do that. Where the community is big, like the Brazilian community is big, [we] work together. For example, if I don’t know him and … I rent him an account … then I take his money. I’ll always be found because someone will know me because of the Brazilian community. They will go on [social media], start posting pictures and posting my name. Someone will know me; I’ll always be found. That's why there's only a handful of people that do that stuff… It's quite hard to get away with it … It's like him [gestures to another rider], he rents an account from my mum's friend … I know she's not going to do that sort of stuff because my mum knows her… With me, I had an account, but they closed my one because I rented it out and then someone messed it up. I use my mum's one now, so I don’t have to rent it. They are complicating it now, even those with documents. [For those] without documents, they are now putting face ID on accounts so they can’t rent. Participant: The government is playing tough, right? Roberto: Yes exactly … I don’t think it's [the food delivery company's] fault, I think it's more the government's fault putting pressure on [the food delivery company].
This phenomenon seems to have followed from various press stories “exposing” the practice of renting accounts (Bryan 2019; Mcmanus 2019). There have even been reports of police crackdowns on suspected “illegal” delivery riders (Maciuca 2021). The immigration lawyer interviewed as part of this research was skeptical about the intent and extent of these “crackdowns”: They need to show to the public that the Home Office is working, and “we are removing X amount of people that are illegal … the Home Office is working hard to remove … the illegal immigrants.” They raid a place… then stop … if they wanted, how could they not know where these illegals are? [I know] this girl [who] works for the Home Office. She's Brazilian, has a British passport … if the Home Office was interested in knowing, “You’re Brazilian. You know the community. Where do Brazilian illegals go?” She would say go here, go there … They don’t because they need these immigrants to do the work they are doing. If you don’t have the visa, they cannot employ you. I think delivery is easier, because there's ways to get accounts to work, but not in hospitality anymore. Just if it's a small place, and maybe there you won’t get the payslip. I was hired at a restaurant when I arrived in London six months ago. I worked there for a month, they paid me a week, there was three weeks left … he never finished paying. Then I quit, because they knew that I didn’t have documentation. I used to work for a Brazilian guy, and he didn’t know I had the documents … He tried to say, “Oh, I’m not going to pay you now.” I said, “If you don’t pay me, I’ll report you.” He said, “Oh, you don’t have documents.” I said, “Yes, I do. Here you go.” Then he paid me … it's hard now with Brexit, but people are still able to maintain themselves.
Wages and Social Status
There are many jobs in London that may be perceived as “low status” but command higher wages than many “white-collar” jobs. The delivery riders I interviewed frequently mentioned figures that would put them at an equivalent wage to mid-level office workers. Take home earnings of £1,000 per week were common. Income is an unreliable indicator of a migrant's social status. Instead, it is the fact that certain jobs are tied to access to institutionalized cultural and social capital that inform perceptions of social status. As the immigration lawyer put it, “It's bad to do this, but I classify Brazilians in two categories, the educated and uneducated, because money-wise it's difficult to classify.” While there are disparities between the documented and the semi- or undocumented, the disparities are not as obvious as economic inequality. Instead, the riders felt they were perceived as low class regardless of background, income, or education due to their appearance and the context of their presence in the streets. Further, it is when they became visible in the “wrong” space that an aggressive emphasis on their “low class” status became most salient.
The riders understood that they were often earning more than those who would discriminate against them, yet due to the perceptions of these roles and the spaces in which these roles occur, they still were treated as inferior. Aleixo, from Minas Gerais, illustrates: When it comes to work, we are the people who are frowned upon… Before meeting the [restaurant we were standing outside's] staff, they came to talk to me, asking how much I made. I get £700 to £1,000, every week. They thought we were earning £100 a week … when people see we earn well, they treat us differently… For example… I would go to [a chain restaurant] to get an order, I would ask: “Is there any food that you haven’t sold, that you can give me?” They: “No, there is no food.” When they said that they thought I was earning £200, at most £300 a week. Then one day I was checking the amount I had made that day. This was 2:00 pm, I had £150. Then the server looked at my app: “Oh, that £150 did you make it this week?” I said: “No, I did it today.” Him: “Ah, so you earn very well.”…Then he was like: “Do you want food? Do you want soda?” So, I said: “Why when you thought I was earning £200 to £300, you never asked if I even wanted a glass of water? Now you see that I make a lot you are offering me food?”
Discrimination and Unwanted Visibility
At the time of fieldwork, there had been a recent exodus of migrants from London due to a combination of Brexit and COVID-19. This impacted the data in so far as it meant that some riders felt they had become more visible both to the police and in the eyes of the public due to their being relatively fewer migrant delivery riders on the streets. Here, Aleixo, 30, from Goiás recounted his experience: Every day some friend who doesn’t have a document is stopped by the police, humiliated … They see your face that you’re an immigrant … they don’t treat you well… This I find very sad, because for me they are all the same. London, 90% are immigrants. Speaker 1: I work with a balaclava … so, for example, I’m riding a normal bike, with my electric bike, balaclava, the policeman with the siren on, jumps on me. Speaker 3: There will for sure be discrimination. Speaker 1: Totally. Speaker 4: Yeah, the discrimination is big. Even in a restaurant, people … treat us differently … tell us to go outside. Sometimes, he doesn’t even look at our number: “Go outside.”
One rider, Carlos, gave an insight into what he believed to be the source of this police harassment: Interviewer: Have you ever experienced problems with the police, on the streets? Carlos: Yes. Interviewer: How is it? Interviewee: Because sometimes there are people stealing phones and the police confuse us [with them]. Because they steal with a [delivery app company] bag too…. The police … think it's us.
Yet, it was not only the police from whom the riders felt they faced discrimination. Many felt discrimination from restaurants, customers, and other members of the public. This was compounded by a feeling that their contributions to the London economy because of their legal status and due to the feeling that Brexit represented to them a rejection of their presence as the following excerpt demonstrates: Speaker 4: Brexit is very ungrateful to immigrants … Who does [the hard work], it's the immigrants, understand? Because if you take immigrants out of here, who’s going to do it? Speaker 5: No one does it. Speaker 4: The English don’t really want to do hard jobs … we don’t feel inferior doing this work. We are just running away from … a difficult past in Brazil…. sending Brazilians back would be taking a step back. Speaker 5: In these more difficult jobs … it's just an immigrant. If you go and ask each person's country, 5% will be English, and that 5% will be a manager of the work. Speaker 4: Cut off opportunities. Speaker 5: [They] want to cut off opportunities. Speaker 4: Placing immigrants in a maze. Speaker 1: Not supportive. Speaker 5: And it's us, we do the heavy lifting. Who else will do it?
The most intense discrimination the riders encountered was often not from the white-collar workers themselves but from the “gatekeepers” — those who stood between the boundary of the public and private such as receptionists and security guards. Paulo recounted his first experience of this: I asked the lady, where should I put the bags? She said, “Leave it here.” I said, “All right.” Then she was like, “You can go now, get out.”…, I was like, “Who are you speaking to? I came to deliver food and you’re talking like, I’m some animal.” I got an order for a company. When I entered, the guy at the reception, who was dark [skinned], came: “No, no, go outside, because I don’t want that kind of people inside.” I said: “I’m making a delivery.” He: “Leave the delivery here.” I showed him the notification — the customer told me to come up, that I had to deliver it to him. He said: “You shit. You don’t come in here. You don’t have any clothes. You’re not fit to go in here.” … he grabbed me and threw me out.
Here, Guilherme surmises: The biggest problem is people's social racism. People who … want to be better than us. You arrive to leave food, there are people who treat you well, [but] there are [also] people who look at you like that [makes an ugly face].
Discussion
The interviewees differ from how invisible or irregular migration is often characterized in the literature. They are well paid, visible, and mobile. This discussion will focus on these three distinguishing features considering the discrimination they faced. It will then explore the implications of invisibility and perversity in the UK immigration system.
Wages and Access to Capital
The forms of capital possessed by migrants before arriving affect labor market trajectories. Those with lower amounts of financial and cultural capital are more likely to be employed in, typically low paid, “ethnic economies” or “ethnic occupational niches” (Roman-Velazquez and Retis 2020). Those with “fungible” cultural capital are more likely to find work within the higher paid “mainstream economy” (Nee and Sanders 2001). Thus, this is a key differentiator between the interviewees and those who most frequently appear in the literature: interviewees experienced a substantial increase in earnings not only compared to “back home” but compared to many other occupations, professional and otherwise. Kelly and Lusis (2006, 890) note that their subjects 7 rationalized “their diminished cultural capital … against the enhanced economic capital … but only when evaluated in a transnational habitus.” Unlike migrants who compare their pay at the destination to what they would receive “back home,” the interviewees would frequently compare their pay to what other migrants (especially documented migrants) and non-migrants were earning, often finding that their earnings were superior despite external perceptions to the contrary. Their relationship to a “transnational habitus” is thus complex. Their habitus was transnational only in that it occurred within a “world city” rather than relying on “back home.” Instead, this “transnational” or “super-diverse” (Vertovec 2007) habitus is co-constituted between migrants within London. The perceptions and evaluations of their capital, the obstacles to acquiring capital, and other discrimination and estimations they faced occurred within this “super-diverse” habitus. These negotiations of claims to capital would often occur between themselves and “other” migrants. 8 Here, perceived social status is not necessarily correlated to access to economic capital. Even in the case of many of the “white collar” office workers (at least those at a junior to mid-level), many will be out-earned by the riders who serve them. This challenges the image of the impoverished “illegal immigrant.” Ironically, much of the discrimination they face is only because they are assumed to be impoverished due to the nature of their work and the manner of their dress. Hatton's (2017) concepts of socio-spatial and socio-legal invisibility help us to understand how and why their work is so often devalued since work that takes place outside of recognized “acceptable” spaces and outside of legal boundaries is devalued even if it pays well.
The existence of this kind of high paid but low status migrant labor is worth researching further. By focusing on and thus characterizing irregular migrant workers as “low paid” and subject to exploitation, the risk is that the disadvantages and discrimination migrants may face will be causally attributed to low pay. The fact that discrimination and hostility occur to those who are relatively well paid can thus remain unacknowledged. Further, that discrimination and hostility continue regardless suggest deeper underlying causes related to their perceived social status. This social status is created by not only the stocks of capital that they possess but by the perception of what constitutes their stocks of capital. It is less whether a migrant is low paid but whether they are perceived as low paid that seems to affect how they are treated.
Regarding exploitation, although some interviewees had previously experienced exploitation, this was not reported to be from the delivery app companies. Instead, the issue of exploitation has become more complex for these workers (Altenried 2021). Their status as independent contractors meant they were shielded from traditional forms of exploitation from business owners. That many interviewees felt that this kind of gig work posed a considerably lower risk of exploitation (non-payment, abuse of position.) than working for migrant employers for instance may help partially answer Doorn and Vijay's (2021) exploration of what makes platform work so appealing to migrants. Yet, in other ways, the interviewees had become “self-exploiting” — being paid per delivery meant they were incentivized to take risks while riding. In fact, many reported they had been in street accidents. Their status as independent contractors, while shielding them from certain forms of exploitation and allowing them a degree of independence (Riordan et al. 2022) also opens them up to considerable risk that the platform companies themselves do little to protect their workers from (Gregory 2021). In this sense, the delivery companies themselves are arguably exploiting the migrants” willingness to take risks and work long hours (Altenried 2021) even if they do not explicitly demand that they do so.
(In)visibility and Discrimination
Writing of irregular US migrants, Schreiber (2018, 59) records that “their hypervisibility on street corners exposed them to harassment.” The street corner, where they would wait to be offered temporary work, was seen as the “wrong” place for these migrants, with the implication that the “right” place would be as invisibilized laborers on “hidden” workplaces such as construction sites or restaurant kitchens. My interviewees faced precisely the opposite problem. Their “right” place was seen as the street, part of their prescribed identity as “street workers.” It was when they transgressed the boundary of the street into the private spheres of office lobbies and restaurant dining areas that they reported they would encounter the most hostility. Indeed, their high visibility was often seen as intrusive to those of a perceived higher social status especially when the riders were present in a space they were seen as not belonging to. In this sense, Hatton's (2017) concept of socio-spatial invisibility is useful. Their “acceptable” workspace is perceived as limited to the streets. Their presence in lobbies and restaurants constitutes a form of socio-spatial invisibility since these spaces are not recognized as spaces where their bodies and the work they perform “belongs” even though their presence in these spaces is a required component of their work.
Finally, there is a contrast compared to the reported discrimination that undocumented workers in other contexts face. Muanamoha, Maharaj, and Preston-Whyte (2010) consider discrimination to arise when there is competition between migrants and locals. London is a super-diverse (Vertovec 2007) world city. The discrimination that the riders faced was often from customers or “gatekeeper” workers such as security guards and receptionists, whom, the riders were keen to point out the irony of, were frequently themselves migrants or, at least, from migrant backgrounds. The hostility they face can thus be seen as a form of boundary work (Bygnes 2017) performed by the “guardians” of white-collar workers; between the “white collar” and “legal” office spaces and the “blue collar” and “illegal” delivery riders. In fact, immigrants will often seek to distance themselves from the subaltern image of the “illegal migrant” to position themselves as the “good migrant” (Martins Junior 2017).
Invisibility and Perversity
(In)visibility permeates the ways in which we can think about the interviewees. Their intentions and work practices are invisibilized since almost all of them arrive on tourist visas but then work undocumented. Yet, this institutional invisibility contrasts with their public visibility. Unlike the “typical” imaginary of the illegal labor migrant working behind closed doors in a factory or remote rural location, their presence on the streets of Central London is obvious. There is a contradiction of working a very publicly visible job while remaining socio-legally (Hatton 2017) invisible. Invisibility need not be equated with a lack of documentation (Griffin 2013) yet there is no official record of the type of labor migration presented in this article that is recorded as labor migration. However, it is not only their working status that is invisible. Their contributions to the economy are also unrecorded and unrecognized underscoring the perversity of the current immigration system. As one immigration lawyer put it: Can you believe that some of them do pay taxes using a fake national insurance number?… my question's always been, “Where the hell does this money go?”
Conclusion
This article explored the experiences of Brazilian migrant workers in their roles as food delivery riders. It employed the conceptual lens of (invisibility) to compare their experiences of their migration project, their work, and the discrimination they felt as migrants and as workers. It found that the riders differed from irregular and “invisible” migrants in the literature in three important ways. They were well paid, visible, and mobile. That they still experienced discrimination prompted the need to analyze the causes of discrimination and perceptions of irregular migrants as “low status” more deeply. The article argued that the UK's immigration and employment regime is “perverse” in its outcomes. The article found that although Brexit seems to have correlated with an increase in “anti-illegal immigration” rhetoric and sentiment, the riders were still able to work but amidst a perceived climate of hostility. The article explored how riders employed perverse forms of social capital in response to perverse UK immigration policy.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme (grant number: ES/V011863/1).
