Abstract
AbstractThis 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.
Highlights
CONTESTED TEMPORAL VOCABULARIES OF FLEXIBILITYIt is widely argued that globalised recruitment markets are becoming more and more “flexible” and migrant labour is well suited in facilitating their functioning (McCollum & Findlay, 2015; Raess & Burgoon, 2015; Ruhs, 2006)
We focus on Eastern European migration due to its significant scale and unprecedented effects on the “flexibilisation” of the U.K. labour market, as it sought to bolster its competitiveness through an increase in part-time, temporary, casualised, and contingent work (Dickey et al, 2018)
The paper explored changing meanings of temporal flexibility in the context of EU migration to the United Kingdom, which is linked to a broader re-evaluation of fluidity and uncertainty in the international labour flows
Summary
Migrants are presented in employment discourse as mobile, changeable individuals, who are able to modify their “identity” quickly and without delay (Bauman, 2001) Their flexibility is framed by temporal slippages and acceptance of change during the postsocialist transition, so that migrants' lack of commitment and preparedness to try new jobs becomes one of their most coveted values. “It is common for Eastern European countries, where the employer is still considered to be something close to God, for employees to be flexible [...] With unpredictable political situation in their country [...] people are afraid to plan and commit to a long-term job” (Viktorija, recruitment agency, rural Scotland) In this context, the migrant flexible worker is expected to be willing to quickly adjust her behaviour and to accept sudden changes in organisational behaviour and develop tolerance of ambiguity. Given the autonomy afforded to businesses with regard to their employment and recruitment practices in the context of the free movement of labour within the EU (as opposed to the more prohibitive post-Brexit Points-Based System), we focus on employer perceptions and practices in relation to migrants' flexibility in relation to time, drawing on the methods considered
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