Recouping masculinity: Understanding the links between macho masculinity and self-exploitation among undocumented South Asian male migrants in Greece

Abstract

The article situates, centre stage, the process by which temporary labour regimes utilize culturally specific masculine norms of undocumented migrant men to enforce labour docility and accumulate greater capital. It draws upon the example of undocumented Pakistani and Bangladeshi men working in orange orchards and strawberry fields in Greece, who pit their masculinity against one another through fruit-picking contests. South Asian male migrants, emasculated and marginalised by their illegality and precarity of work, attempt to rework their masculine status through such self-exploitative contests. These competitions, predicated on the neoliberal individualizing of workers and their success, displace exploitation by linking piece-rate earnings to muscular masculinity and individual capacity. Fruit-picking contests are an efficient and creative labour management practice wherein fluid masculine subjectivities are harnessed to weed out “inefficient” workers, subdue labour unrest, erode worker solidarity, and maximise labour extraction without adopting overt labour disciplinary mechanisms.