IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/woemps/v29y2015i3p427-443.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

‘Flexible’ workers for ‘flexible’ jobs? The labour market function of A8 migrant labour in the UK

Author

Listed:
  • David McCollum

    (University of St Andrews, UK)

  • Allan Findlay

    (University of St Andrews, UK)

Abstract

There is considerable academic and policy interest in how immigrants fare in the labour market of their host economy. This research is situated within these debates and explores the nexus between migrant labour and segmented labour markets. Specifically the analysis focuses on East-Central Europeans in Britain: a sizeable cohort of largely economic and recent migrants. A large quantity of interviews with low-wage employers and recruiters is used to examine the role served by East-Central European migrant labour in the UK labour market, to question whether this function is distinct from conventional understandings of the function of migrant labour and to explore how employer practices and other processes ‘produce’ these employment relations. Based on the findings from this approach, an argument is developed which contends that the ready availability of a well perceived cohort of migrant labour has sustained and extended flexible labour market structures towards the bottom end of the labour market.

Suggested Citation

  • David McCollum & Allan Findlay, 2015. "‘Flexible’ workers for ‘flexible’ jobs? The labour market function of A8 migrant labour in the UK," Work, Employment & Society, British Sociological Association, vol. 29(3), pages 427-443, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:29:y:2015:i:3:p:427-443
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wes.sagepub.com/content/29/3/427.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Ian Clark & Trevor Colling, 2018. "Work in Britain's Informal Economy: Learning from Road†Side Hand Car Washes," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(2), pages 320-341, June.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    A8 migration; flexible labour markets; labour migration;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:woemps:v:29:y:2015:i:3:p:427-443. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.