La Strada Documentation Center

The Wages of Fear: risk, safety and undocumented work

Document number
2770
Date
2011
Title
The Wages of Fear: risk, safety and undocumented work
Author/publisher
Jon Burnett and David Whyte
Availability
View/save PDF version of this document
Document type(s)
Research/Study/Analysis,
Keywords
Domestic servitude
Summary
This report presents a study of precarious working conditions experienced by undocumented workers, and as such, it documents the harms that undocumented workers suffer and witness. It begins by exploring the importance of notions of labour market flexibility and flexicurity in government and trans-national government policy making. It argues that the exploitation of migrant workers and undocumented workers is structured by these labour market conditions. Second, it utilises the interview data to consider in detail this structural subordination, arguing that, combined with the at times contradictory imperatives of immigration policy, the precariousness of undocumented workers acts as a disciplinary tool. Finally it indicates that, in this context, the occupational risks to which undocumented workers are exposed need to be understood in terms of the highly dangerous and violent consequences experienced by those workers.
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