Migrant subjectivities and temporal flexibility of East-Central European labour migration to the United Kingdom
Abstract
This paper seeks to broaden existing understandings of migrant worker flexibility drawing on the data from the two ethnographic studies of low-wage employers and Eastern European migrants in Scotland. It focuses on the temporal aspects of flexibility production in employment discourse and temporal expectations about flexible migrant workers. Our findings reveal double movement of interruption and remaking of temporal flexibility, which challenges directional expectations about time and unsettles the assumed connectivity between flexibility's temporal elements. Uncertainty and instability of migration and employment frameworks undermine the attempts of employers and migrants to manage time, to develop continuous portfolio careers and coherent temporal horizons. Furthermore, contested temporal expectations about flexible migrant workers create fragmented and fractured "flexiworkers" that do not fit within the existing temporal frameworks of signs, routines, and rhythms. The paper suggests re-orientation of flexibility debates beyond temporal measurement, outside familiar temporal structures, and towards redefinition of flexible worker identities.
Citation
Shubin , S & McCollum , D 2021 , ' Migrant subjectivities and temporal flexibility of East-Central European labour migration to the United Kingdom ' , Population, Space and Place , vol. Early View , e2508 . https://doi.org/10.1002/psp.2508
Publication
Population, Space and Place
Status
Peer reviewed
DOI
10.1002/psp.2508ISSN
1544-8444Type
Journal article
Description
Funding: Economic and Social Research Council, Grant/Award Numbers: ES/J007374/1, RES-625-28-0001.Collections
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