Mobility strategies, ‘mobility differentials’ and ‘transnational exit’: the experiences of precarious migrants in London’s hospitality jobs

Gabriella Alberti

Work, Employment & Society, 2014, vol. 28, issue 6, 865-881

Abstract: This article explores the patterns of occupational and geographical mobility of migrant hospitality workers, drawing on participatory research in London. It focuses on the ways in which migrants strategize around temporary employment and move across different jobs and locations trying to improve their precarious lives. Combining labour process theory and the perspective of the autonomy of migration the author reviews the concept of ‘mobility power’ as a form of resistance to degrading work. The findings illustrate that, while certain categories of migrants remain trapped in temporary employment, others manage to move on occupationally, develop aspects of their lives beyond work and engage in new migration. The main argument is that, in contrast to mainstream accounts of migrants’ labour market incorporation, migrant temp workers use their transnational exit power to quit bad jobs and defy employers’ assumptions about their availability to work under poor conditions.

Keywords: autonomy; hospitality; labour process theory; London; migrants; mobility differentials; mobility power; precarious employment; transnationality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://wes.sagepub.com/content/28/6/865.abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:woemps:v:28:y:2014:i:6:p:865-881

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Work, Employment & Society from British Sociological Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().