Experiences of forced labour amongst Chinese migrant workers: exploring the context of vulnerability and protection (original) (raw)
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Partnership working as liberation psychology: Forced labor among UK Chinese migrant workers
Journal of prevention & intervention in the community
In this article we seek to reflect critically on some recent research we have carried out, in collaboration with a Chinese welfare NGO, on the experience of forced labor among Chinese migrant workers in the UK. We will (a) locate briefly the wider political context of migrant work (both regular and irregular) in the UK; (b) explore how and why the actual research methods and process of the research deviated in practice from those that were planned; and
Community, Work & Family, 2016
This contribution builds on the work Lewis has engaged in around women's decisionmaking processes on work and care. Gender has been an important consideration across her work and this has been explored in familial and organizational settings. The personal is undoubtedly political and a feminist lens privileges this. Previous research (including Lewis) has marked a shift from work-life balance to work personal life integration. This implies agency and perhaps a particular kind of woman able to make choices. In contrast, this paper focuses on Chinese migrant women working in vulnerable situations. Drawing on data gathered from a forced labour project, we present some composite narratives from women as daughters, mothers and wives. These highlight the role of the core economy in decisions about migration for work. Inevitably work decisions are bound up with and situated in wider care and familial networks. These insights around emotional and practical labour are feminist concerns. We present the complex decisions made by women around precarious work, present and distant 'families' and care. We suggest that future work-life research should heed Lewis' call for more nuanced understandings of the multi-layered context of people's experiences, workplace practices and relevant national policies, but go beyond this, to pay attention to the globalised forces underpinning ever greater inequity in work, in families and in communities.
Chinese migrant women and families in britain
Womens Studies International Forum, 2002
Synopsis -This article examines the mode of understanding and experiences of family relationships of Chinese migrant women in Britain. In contrast to much existing research work on the patterns and experiences of postwar settlement of unskilled Chinese male labourers in Britain, the focus here is on the life stories of 41 Chinese women with different migration trajectories and varying economic and cultural capital. Their oral testimonies reveal Chinese women's diverse expectations and experiences of migrant family relationships and their different strategies to achieve self-fulfillment both within and outside the confines of the migrant family. For some women, migration brings opportunities for a fulfilling and independent lifestyle. They are successful in negotiating their way around and sometimes out of their initial familial and social position. For others, they bear the disproportionate cost and labour of familial strategies of advancement and remain vulnerable to the most constraining aspects of diasporic existence. D
Precarious lives: Experiences of forced labour among refugees and asylum seekers in England
2013
List of tables 1 Countries of origin of interviewees 2 Socio-legal status of refugees and asylum seekers 3 Sectors of jobs in UK held by interviewees This report presents new findings on forced labour and migration in the UK. The Precarious Lives research demonstrates for the first time that refugees and asylum seekers are a group of migrants susceptible to exploitation in various forms of severely exploitative, and, in some cases, forced labour in England. The report focuses on the experiences of refugees and asylum seekers in forced labour and considers the reasons they are engaged in it. Key findings • Forced labour is experienced by three particular groups who interact with the asylum system at different points while in the UK: asylum seekers at entry, trafficked migrants and undocumented migrants. Most of our interviewees moved between various types of precarious work across a spectrum encompassing vulnerable work, seriously exploitative work and forced labour. • All found themselves either on the margins of the labour market or in transactional exchange in a wide range of jobs in catering and hospitality, care, domestic work, food packing or processing, cleaning, manufacturing, retail, construction, security and other sectors. • The most common experiences were of 'employers' and/or 'intermediaries' abusing workers' socio-legal status of diminished rights to welfare, work and residence to withhold promised wages, enforce excessive overtime and subject them to abusive working and living conditions.
Socio-legal status and experiences of forced labour among asylum seekers and refugees in the UK
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy, 2016
Socio-legal status determines the differential rights to residence, work and social welfare that accrue to migrants depending on their particular immigration status. This paper presents analysis of original empirical data generated in qualitative interviews with migrants who had both made a claim for asylum and experienced conditions of forced labour in the UK. Following an outline of the divergent socio-legal statuses assigned to individual migrants within the asylum system, early discussions in the paper offer a summary of key aspects and indicators of forced labour. Subsequent sections highlight the significance of socio-legal status in constructing such migrants as inherently vulnerable to severe exploitation. It is concluded that immigration policy and, more particularly, the differential socio-legal statuses that it structures at various stages of the asylum process, helps to create the conditions in which severe exploitation and forced labour are likely to flourish among asyl...
Forced labour and UK immigration policy : status matters?
2011
This paper: investigates the links between immigration status and migrants’ vulnerability to forced labour; explores how socio-legal status (specific rights to residence, work and social welfare) impacts on migrants’ risk of forced labour, and; reviews UK immigration policy, to assess how far it may reduce or facilitate the use of forced labour. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) commissioned this paper as part of its programme on forced labour, which seeks to highlight the extent of forced labour in the UK, support its victims and identify ways of eradicating it.
This article examines the link between restrictive immigration schemes, specifically ‘tied visas’ and the selective application of labour laws, with exploitation of workers. It focuses on the situation of migrant domestic workers, who accompany their employers to the United Kingdom (UK) and are exposed to both an excessively restrictive visa regime, introduced in April 2012, and limited labour protections. The immigration status of these workers is currently tied to a named employer, a restriction that traps workers into exploitative conditions, often amounting to forced labour, servitude or slavery. Additionally, current UK labour laws are either not enforced or not applicable to domestic workers. The article concludes that unless the current immigration regime is abolished and comprehensive labour law protections are extended to migrant domestic workers, exploitation will continue.