Global Cities At Work

Cathy McIlwaine, Jon May, Joanna Herbert, Yara Evans, Kavita Datta, Jane Wills

Description

This book is about the people who always get taken for granted. The people who clean our offices and trains, care for our elders and change the sheets on the bed. Global Cities at Work draws on testimony collected from more than 800 foreign-born workers employed in low-paid jobs in London during the early years of the twenty-first century.



This book breaks new ground in linking London's new migrant division of labour to the twin processes of subcontracting and increased international migration that have been central to contemporary processes of globalisation.



It also raises the level of debate about migrant labour, encouraging us to look behind the headlines. The authors ask us to take a politically informed view of our urban labour markets and to prioritise the issue of poverty in underemployed communities.
List of tables

List of figures

List of plates

List of acronyms

Acknowledgements

1. Deregulation, migration and the new world of work

2. Global city labour markets and London's new migrant division of labour

3. London's low paid foreign-born workers

4. Living and remaking London's ethnic and gender divisions

5. Tactics of survival amongst migrant workers in London

6. Relational lives: Migrants, London and the rest of the world

7. Remaking the city: Immigration and post-secular politics in London today

8 Just geographies of (im)migration

Appendices

References

Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• Emigration
• General officer
• Development
• General
• Labor
• Migration
• Immigration

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 31 décembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783715398
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Global Cities at Work
 
 
Global Cities at Work
New Migrant Divisions of Labour
JANE WILLS, KAVITA DATTA, YARA EVANS, JOANNA HERBERT, JON MAY and CATHY McILWAINE
 
First published 2010 by Pluto Press
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175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by
Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC,
175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Jane Wills, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine 2010
The right of Jane Wills, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN   978 0 7453 2799 0   Hardback
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ISBN   978 1 7837 1539 8   ePub
ISBN   978 1 7837 1540 4   Mobi
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CONTENTS
List of tables
List of figures
List of photos
List of abbreviations and acronyms
Acknowledgements
1.
Deregulation, Migration and the New World of Work
2.
Global City Labour Markets and London’s New Migrant Division of Labour
3.
London’s Low-Paid Foreign-Born Workers
4.
Living and Remaking London’s Ethnic and Gender Divisions
5.
Tactics of Survival among Migrant Workers in London
6.
Relational Lives: Migrants, London and the Rest of the World
7.
Remaking the City: Immigration and Post-Secular Politics in London Today
8.
Just Geographies of (Im)migration
Appendices
References
Index
 
 
LIST OF TABLES
1.1
The UK’s points-based immigration regime
2.1
The London–UK differential in wage rates for low-paying jobs (1993 and 2001)
2.2
Changes in real hourly earnings in low-paid occupations, 1993–2000, 2001–05, London and the UK
2.3
The distribution of migrants across higher- and lower-paid jobs in London, by time in the UK and by origin, 2005/06
2.4
Total employment and the proportion of foreign-born labour, by occupation, London, 1993/94, 1999/2000, 2001/02, 2004/05
2.5
Total employment and the proportion of foreign-born labour, by occupation, UK, 1993/94, 1999/2000, 2001/02, 2004/05
3.1
Regions and countries of origin
3.2
The wages of low-paid migrants in London
3.3
Likes about the job
3.4
Dislikes about the job
3.5
Wages, conditions and the characteristics of labour supply in care, cleaning and hospitality
6.1
Highest level of education by nationality
7.1
Religious affiliation by place of birth
7.2
Estimates of the numbers covered and the wages gained in the London Living Wage campaign (February 2009)
 
 
LIST OF FIGURES
1.1
Net migration to the UK, 1901–2006
1.2
The occupational distribution of migrant workers in the UK economy, 2006
1.3
Employment rates in London and the rest of the UK, 1992–2006
1.4
London’s real gain to work and hourly earnings relative to the rest of the UK, 2005
2.1
Change in employment in London, by sector, 1981–2004
2.2
Inequality in London, households by richest/poorest deciles, 1979/80, 1989–91 and 1999
2.3
Employment change by job quality, London and the UK, 1981–1991
2.4
Foreign-born London residents, by country of birth and geographic grouping, 2006
2.5
The proportion of employees who are foreign-born, by selected occupations, London, 1993/94 to 2004/05
3.1
The geographical origins of London’s low-paid workers
3.2
The geography of employees earning less than £7.50 per hour, in London, by place of residence, 2008
3.3
The geography of foreign-born workers’ residence in London
4.1
The proportion of workers in London earning less than £7.50 an hour, by ethnicity, 2005–07
4.2
The proportion of the population on below-average income, by ethnicity, 1994/95–1996/97 and 2004/05–2006/07
4.3
The gender pay ratio in London and Great Britain, 1974–2003 (full-time workers)
6.1
Remittance flows from London to the rest of the world
 
 
LIST OF PHOTOS
3.1
Migrant woman cleaning offices
4.1
Migrant man cleaning offices
5.1
Carila Latin American Welfare Group 30th anniversary meeting, London, July 2007
6.1
Advertisement for money-transfer agency, London
7.1
London Citizens’ Living Wage campaign at the Department for Families, Children and Schools, October 2008
7.2
Colombian migrants calling for regularisation at May Day march, 2007
7.3
Mobilising through faith, Justice for Cleaners, Westminster’s Roman Catholic cathedral, 2007
 
 
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS
APS – Annual Population Survey
ASHE – Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings
BUILD – Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development
CANUK – Central Association of Nigerians in the United Kingdom
CIS – Construction Industry Scheme
COIC – Commission on Integration and Cohesion
DCLG – Department of Communities and Local Government
DFID – Department for International Development
EPZ – Export Processing Zone
EU – European Union
FDI – Foreign Direct Investment
FIRE – Finance, Insurance and Real Estate
GLA – Greater London Authority
IAF – Industrial Areas Foundation
ILR – Indefinite Leave to Remain
IMF – International Monetary Fund
IOM – International Organisation for Migration
IPPR – Institute for Public Policy Research
IWA – Indian Workers Association
LFS – Labour Force Survey
LLW – London Living Wage
MDGs – Millennium Development Goals
MOT – Ministry of Transport
MTBs – Money-Transfer Businesses
NES – New Earnings Survey
NHS – National Health Service
NMW – National Minimum Wage
NVQ – National Vocational Qualification
OC – Occupational Categories
ODA – Overseas Development Assistance
RPI – Retail Price Index
SAP – Structural Adjustment Programme
SOC – Standard Occupational Classification
TUPE – Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) regulations
TUC – Trades Union Congress
UK – United Kingdom
US – United States of America
WRS – Worker Registration Scheme
 
 
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research on which this book is based was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC Awards RES00230694 Global Cities at Work and RES148250046 Work, Identity and New Forms of Political Mobilisation: An Assessment of Broad-Based Organising and London’s Living Wage campaign). We are very grateful for this support and would like to thank all those involved in administering, refereeing and evaluating the projects. Our research also benefited from early financial input from the Greater London Authority, Oxfam, UNISON and Queen Mary, University of London, for which we are grateful.
Our Global Cities at Work project benefited enormously from the input of an advisory team that comprised Nathalie Branosky (from Inclusion), Don Flynn (from the Migrant Rights Network), Declan Gaffney (from the Greater London Authority), Deborah Littman (from London Citizens and UNISON) and Laurie Heselden (from the Southern and Eastern Region of the Trades Union Congress). The Living Wage research project was similarly supported by the participants in the ESRC Identities Programme, and particularly its director, Professor Margie Wetherell, from the Open University.
In 2006 we were lucky enough to find a number of senior managers at one cleaning contractor in London who felt able to grant us access to the cleaning staff employed in one building at Canary Wharf. This provided us with invaluable insight into London’s migrant division of labour – and we are very grateful to everybody involved. Just prior to this, we also met a senior manager at one of the banks on the Wharf, and they too opened their doors to a photography project. We are particularly grateful to the photographer Chris Clunn for his wonderful work, and for his permission to reproduce some of his images on the cover, as well as later on in the book. We are also very grateful to photographer Chris Jepson for the other pictures we have used in the book.
We are also indebted to a great group of enthusiastic and committed young researchers and community organisers who worked on our project as part of their training with London Citizens in July 2005. Nana Adu-Kwapong, Alana Bates, Elaine Ho, Catherine Finney, Ciara Silke, Marisol Reyes, Tracey McAndrews, Kombo Lovemore, Amir Malik, Mohammed Ali and Anna Majcherek spent a month standing outside workplaces, riding underground trains and attending union meetings in order to collect some of the data we use in this book. Boguslaw Potoczny, Monika Percic and Eva Matamba also provided excellent service by later conducting research interviews with people in the Bosnian, Croatian, Congolese, Polish and Slovenian communities in London. We would also like to thank Yiannis Kaplanis from the London School of Economics who provided us with access to the large data sets that we used in this project – without his expertise we would have missed the big picture that has added so much to our work. We are also very grateful to Ed Oliver, the Cartographer based in the Department of Geography, Queen Mary, University of London, who has done such a brilliant job producing all the Figures we use in this book. Thanks are also due to Kerry Cable and her colleagues at Business Friend, who com