Times of Work and Social Life: Bangladeshi Migrants in Northeast Italy and London

Abstract

Taking inspiration from renewed scholarly interest in the role of time in migration, we compare the temporalities of work and social life among male Bangladeshi-origin migrants in northeast Italy and London. We draw conceptually on time geography and rhythmanalysis, and empirically on interviews with 40 Bangladeshi migrant men, to demonstrate the stark contrasts in migrants’ daily lives in the two settings and the impacts of moving from northeast Italy to London. More broadly, this article contributes to debates on the temporalities and rhythms of migrants’ everyday lives via comparative analysis. While in both settings capitalism inexorably shaped class dynamics through its command over flexible labor, there were also marked differences in the routinization of migrants’ work and social and family life. In northeast Italy’s small industrial towns, stable shift-based working rhythms created regular free time for family and associative life. In London, where participants’ employment was limited to low-skill jobs with unsocial hours, family and social life was disrupted, with consequential effects on social integration. The findings presented here highlight the under-appreciated role of onward migration in global migration dynamics and underscore the importance of time, in particular the way in which the diverse temporalities of migrants’ daily lives are shaped by the mode of regulation of the labor market and the spatial setting where migrants’ working and social lives unfold.