From Coping Strategies to Tactics: London's Low‐Pay Economy and Migrant Labour
| Author | Yara Evans,Jon May,Joanna Herbert,Kavita Datta,Cathy McIlwaine,Jane Wills |
| Published date | 01 June 2007 |
| Date | 01 June 2007 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8543.2007.00620.x |
From Coping Strategies to Tactics:
London’s Low-Pay Economy and
Migrant Labour
Kavita Datta, Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans,
Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Jane Wills
Abstract
This article examines the means by which low-paid migrant workers survive in
a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from
the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers
face in the London labour market reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. Instead,
workers adopt a range of ‘tactics’ that enable them to ‘get by’, if only just, on
a day-to-day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the
connections between different workers’ experiences of the workplace, home and
community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations
in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of the London labour market and of
the city more widely.
1. Introduction
Following a dramatic rise in the size of London’s foreign-born population, a
disproportionate number of London’s low-paid jobs are now filled by
foreign-born migrants (Spence 2005). The increasing importance of migrant
labour to London’s low-paid economy poses a challenge to an industrial
relations literature that has tended to focus upon the experiences of black and
minority (BME) rather than migrant workers (Modood et al. 1997; Shields
and Wheatley Price 1998, 2002; Trond et al. 2005). Likewise, while scholars
of industrial relations have examined recent changes within the workplace
and questions surrounding labour market access and unionization (Healy
et al. 2004; Holgate 2005; Milkman 2000), far less is known about the ways in
which low-paid workers ‘get by’ on a day-to-day basis.
Contributing to an ongoing engagement between industrial relations and
geography, this article highlights the importance of locating workplaces and
Kavita Datta, Cathy McIlwaine, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Jane Wills are at
Queen Mary, University of London.
British Journal of Industrial Relations
45:2 June 2007 0007–1080 pp. 404–432
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007. Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
workers in their wider geographical context (see Ellem and Shields 1999;
Herod et al. 2003). Rather than focusing upon low-paid workers’ experiences
of the workplace, the article explores the wider context within which migrant
workers negotiate a changing labour market. Examining the interconnecting
experiences of workplace, home and community, and drawing on a concep-
tual framework developed most fully in the Global South (Rakodi 1991) and
Eastern and Central Europe (Smith and Stenning 2006), it explores the
‘coping strategies’ deployed by workers in an effort to make a life for them-
selves in a Global City. We argue that, although migrants often move to
London as part of a conscious strategy to better their lives, the barriers they
face on arrival in London reduces their ability to ‘strategize’. As a result, such
efforts may in fact be better understood as ‘tactics’ rather than coping ‘strat-
egies’, and we demonstrate the role that national, ethnic and gender relations
play in shaping different groups’ abilities to cope with life in London.
In Section 2 of the article, we review the literature on coping strategies
before advocating a focus on the tactics used by low-paid migrants as they try
to survive in a city like London. In Section 3, we outline recent changes to the
London labour market and the increasingly important role that low-paid
migrants play within it. In the main discussion, we draw on data from a new
survey and in-depth interviews with low-paid migrant workers in London to
explore their experiences of labour market segmentation, social reproduction
and social exclusion. In the conclusion, we outline the contribution such an
approach might make to industrial relations research and highlight the
importance of geographical context in shaping the very different experiences
of migrant groups in the Global City.
2. Coping, work and migration: key debates
The ways in which people cope with the demands of daily life from a per-
spective that encompasses the interconnections between home and work has
been the focus of research for some considerable time and from a range of
different viewpoints across the world. The roots of this research on coping or
survival strategies developed initially to explore how people living in mar-
ginal situations managed to juggle resources in innovative and complex ways
in order to get by, often during times of risk (Wallace 2002).1Although little
of this early work focused conceptually on the notion of strategies or mecha-
nisms (see Stack’s 1974 classic study of survival among African-Americans in
the USA), it was critical in exposing the holistic nature of survival and the
linkages between production and social reproduction that have informed
subsequent research.
One broad strand of this research focuses on the industrial Northern
economies and explores how people respond to social and economic change,
and especially to unemployment and industrial restructuring (Gershuny and
Pahl 1979; Pahl 1984; Williams and Windebank 1999). These studies have
emphasized the agency of actors at both the individual and household levels,
London’s Low-Pay Economy and Migrant Labour 405
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.
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