Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour (review)

By focusing the lens on the capital city of London, U.K., and its world of paid work, authors of this book are able to present a close-up picture of the lives of migrant (‘foreign-born’) workers within the city’s labour market. In fully understanding the picture, the authors connect local and national realities to transnational trajectories within which they operate. The latter is what characterizes London as a “global” city.

The book presents a complex and comprehensive analysis in that it begins with political economy discussions (Chapters One and Two), yet it is very accessible, including some of the most lucid descriptions of a neoliberal system that I have seen, as well as a thorough engagement with relevant theoretical literature. The density of this discussion is balanced in the middle sections (Chapters Three through Six) with narratives of life, relationships and survival from low-waged, precarious workers themselves. The latter include migrants from within the European Union (EU) as well as beyond it; asylum-seekers, whom we might refer to as refugees or refugee claimants; students with limited work visas; visitors with work permits; and a whole range of irregular migrants or undocumented workers. The complexity and comprehensiveness of the information in the chapters comes alive through the experiences of workers drawn from 429 conversations including longer encounters with over 100 workers. Chapter Seven focuses on finding a voice and collective organisation among these migrant workers which are different from their predecessors of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Finally, Chapter Eight reflects on the role of the trade union movement in the UK. These historical and contemporary realities are framed within the machinations of the British state with particular reference to its migration, immigration, citizenship, labour and social wage policies as well as that of supra-state institutions, such as that of the EU. Apart from being informative, I found the chapters to be extremely helpful in making sense of what may be happening in other global cities, such as Toronto, Montréal and Vancouver.

The main argument of the authors is that global cities like London now have a ‘migrant’ division of labour, thus adding to the racial, gender and ethnic division of labour characterizing the labour force before the 1980s, which included ‘new Commonwealth’ immigrants from independent nations of Africa and Asia who took up the least desirable jobs in healthcare, transportation, factories and mills; however they had citizenship rights. In contrast to that, by 2006, about 35 per cent of London’s working age population were born overseas, many of whom are not eligible for citizenship status, some being of irregular status. By 2001, it is estimated that there were about half a million “irregular” migrants (undocumented) in London alone. This is largely a result of U.K’s 5-tiered immigration policy which has encouraged highly skilled and professionalized immigrants and deterred less skilled immigrants. This is not unlike other immigrant-receiving countries, such as Canada and Australia. Among unskilled workers, the state (and employers) have a clear preference for EU workers who happen to be white and who have the legal right to work in any European country. The least preferred are those who are beyond the EU and those who are undocumented, who are by and large people of colour. Details of this system are clearly presented in the book.

Changes made by New Labour government in April 2000 have made foreign students, tourists, work permit-holders, asylum-seekers and of course undocumented workers ineligible to a whole gamut of rights that cover those who hold citizenship status. These include labour rights, access to welfare benefits and rights to family re-union. Moreover, low-paid, what we would call precarious workers, in London are “super-diverse,” in the authors’ words, in that they include those from the a8 countries of Eastern Europe that joined the original eu15 in 2004; Bulgaria and Romania that joined...