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The Production of Difference and Maintenance of Inequality: The Place of Young Goan Men in a Post-Crisis UK Labour Market

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  • Linda McDowell
  • Esther Rootham
  • Abby Hardgrove

Abstract

This article examines the ways in which young migrant men are constructed as potential employees in a British town where service sector employment, often on a casual or precarious basis, dominates the bottom end of the labour market. Low-wage jobs in many British towns are now constructed as feminized, low waged and demanding personal skills of empathy and servility. In this context, young men, and especially young men of colour, including recent in-migrants, are at a disadvantage, constructed by employers, agencies, co-workers and customers as less eligible workers than ‘locals’. We use the experiences of young men from Goa as a lens though which to trace the ways in which expectations and experiences when looking for employment produce a hierarchical division of labour in precarious jobs at the bottom end of the service sector.

Suggested Citation

  • Linda McDowell & Esther Rootham & Abby Hardgrove, 2016. "The Production of Difference and Maintenance of Inequality: The Place of Young Goan Men in a Post-Crisis UK Labour Market," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 108-124, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:gender:v:23:y:2016:i:2:p:108-124
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Linda McDowell & Adina Batnitzky & Sarah Dyer, 2008. "Internationalization and the Spaces of Temporary Labour: The Global Assembly of a Local Workforce," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 46(4), pages 750-770, December.
    2. Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore, 2001. "Contingent Chicago: Restructuring the Spaces of Temporary Labor," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 471-496, September.
    3. Bauder, Harald, 2006. "Labor Movement: How Migration Regulates Labor Markets," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195180886.
    4. Linda McDowell & Esther Rootham & Abby Hardgrove, 2014. "Precarious work, protest masculinity and communal regulation: South Asian young men in Luton, UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 28(6), pages 847-864, December.
    5. David N. F. Bell & David G. Blanchflower, 2011. "Young people and the Great Recession," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 27(2), pages 241-267.
    6. Roediger, David R. & Esch, Elizabeth D., 2012. "The Production of Difference: Race and the Management of Labor in U.S. History," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199739752.
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    Cited by:

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    2. rashné limki, 2018. "On the coloniality of work: Commercial surrogacy in India," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(4), pages 327-342, July.
    3. Joshua Kalemba, 2023. "The coloniality of labor: Migrant Black African youths' experiences of looking for and finding work in an Australian deindustrializing city," Gender, Work and Organization, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(2), pages 612-627, March.

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