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Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore the entanglement of rural migrant workers’ expectations and aspirations about better opportunities with the realities of precarious working life in urban Ethiopia.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, Ethiopia has become Africa’s most attractive destination for labor-intensive, export-oriented manufacturing industries for several companies from economically emerging countries interested in searching for “cheap labor” for their labor-intensive industries. The expansion of industrial parks across the country’s major cities drew a large number of labor migrant youths from rural villages to the cities in search of industrial work. The majority of these first-generation industrial labor migrants are young women seeking work, independence, and a better urban life. Drawing on fieldwork in two foreign garment companies in Bole Lemi Industrial Park (BLIP) in Addis Ababa, this paper examines how the factories’ demand to employ young laborers has fed the motivations and aspirations of scores of young rural labor migrants to work in the industrial park and how their expectations entangled with everyday precarious working life. Young rural migrants associate labor migration with escaping rural poverty and realizing their future life goals. They imagined the city as a source of opportunity for a better future. However, the migrant workers’ expectations—better city life vis-à-vis realities of factory work— the global industrial work ethic and discipline have become the new challenges. For instance, factory workers have meager wages, which are no longer adequate to sustain their lives. As a result, workers turn to other strategies to cope with such forms of life, such as living in new types of arrangements (e.g., cohabitation) and sex work.

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This talks investigates how labor and emotions relate within the affective space of modern postural yoga (MPY) in Turkey with a view as to peel and thus examine two layers of emotional labor: “emotional toll” and “emotional spillover.”

Paper long abstract:

This talks investigates how labor and emotions relate within the affective space of modern postural yoga (MPY) in Turkey with a view as to peel and thus examine two layers of emotional labor: “emotional toll” and “emotional spillover.” I argue that MPY imposes competition and rivalry on instructors which takes an emotional toll especially since they must manage norms around “disinterestedness” given yoga’s affective normative space and the everyday struggle to earn a living amidst precarity. Second, I argue that MPY is characterized by a therapeutic invasion as part of global “psychotherapeutic” domination which not only pressures instructors in Turkey to perform certain emotions and hide others during yoga sessions but also spills over into their everyday creating lasting impacts on their emotional practices and sociabilities. The talk is based on 22 in-depth interviews I conducted with yoga instructors in 2022 and 2023, mostly in Istanbul as well as my observations at an Istanbul yoga studio between 2011 and 2020.

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This communication seeks to analyze the connections between loneliness and precarious labour among individuals aged 18 to 30 in the city of Madrid (Spain). These connections, far from being univocal ambivalent, encompassing aspects such as alienation and discomfort, as well as agency and resistance

Paper long abstract:

The phenomenon of loneliness has been publicly constructed as a foremost social issue - a hallmark of the 21st-century pandemic - essentially viewed as negative, with individual and subjective roots linked to psychobiological processes. However, contributions from the anthropology of loneliness extensively problematize this matter. Towards this topic, sustained ethnographic fieldwork spanning over two years with individuals aged 18 to 30 in the city of Madrid (Spain) and its Metropolitan Area regarding loneliness proves that, in contrast to the public construction of loneliness, it is a socio-cultural affect, at times contradictory and ambivalent, rooted in structural and cultural processes that go beyond mere individual experiences.

Within this framework, waged labour and the logics of precarization are described by the young individuals involved in the ethnographic work as major causes and motivations for the experienced loneliness. Job insecurity, associated with neoliberal flexibility, the characteristic labour/working precariousness among the youth in Southern Europe, the often contradictory new logics of corporative management, the diminishing significance of the workplace as a motor of socialization, or what Boltanski and Chiapello (2002) have termed "connective capitalism" are some of the labour-related elements observed following the widespread emergence of such affect. Thus, this communication aims to analyze the links between loneliness and waged labour, which, far from being univocal, are complex and ambivalent, encompassing aspects such as alienation, fatigue, and discomfort, as well as agency and forms of resistance.

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What happens when people have a computer as their closest supervisor at work and a smartphone as their companion during off-hours? I attempt to answer this question by examining international labor migrants in their workplaces, as well as mapping their general personal social networks.

Paper long abstract:

What happens when people have a computer as their closest supervisor at work and a smartphone as their companion during off-hours? I attempt to answer this question by examining international labor migrants in logistic centers in Copenhagen and Barcelona, as well as mapping their general personal social networks. My preliminary findings suggest that the capability of labor migrants to socialize with peers has been restricted. On one hand, computers have replaced middle-managers in their work. While these "computer-middle-managers" issue commands and communicate, they do not create a space for developing deeper social relationships with co-workers. On the other hand, smartphones have provided a solution to maintaining social connections without geographical limitations. For international labor migrants with irregular working hours, this serves as a welcome platform to stay connected with family and friends far away, yet it also appears to disconnect them from individuals in similar situations in their immediate proximity. This requires further analysis on the relational damages the technological advances have on precarious labor migrants.

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The paper examines labor precarity among migrants in Norway, revealing their pursuit of freedom and protection from precarity through informality and the gig economy. However, it underscores the limitations of this quest, as it falls short in providing emancipatory belonging and alternative futures.

Paper long abstract:

Nordic labor markets are renowned for their strong protection of workers through highly regulated and secure employment, decent wages, and comprehensive welfare benefits. However, an emerging body of research points to processes of work precarization in the region, highlighting factors such as the flexibilization and de-regulation of labor relations, as well as processes of globalization and migration.

In this paper, I explore migrants’ experiences in three Norwegian labor sectors: construction, cleaning, and on-demand platform/gig work. Drawing on ethnographic field work and interviews with workers and stakeholders (unions, NGOs), I show how labor-, welfare-, and border regimes intersect in shaping migrant workers’ experiences of precarity. I highlight the strategies migrants develop to cope with work precarity but also to seek emotional well-being, construct life projects, and free themselves from compounded relations of domination. To some, informal work—highly criminalized in Norway—offers alternative social protection, as formalized but precarious labor contracts and street-level bureaucrats’ internal bordering practices limit their access to welfare services and hence to full citizenship. Others find “peace of mind” in the new, often deemed precarious platform economy which provides “freedom” from even more precarious low-wage jobs. I examine these discourses of “protection” and “freedom”, which I argue diverge from the imaginaries of alternative futures as well as the search for "emancipatory belonging" that are evident in the migrants’ broader narratives and life histories. While challenging Nordic exceptionalism, the paper contributes to the theorization of labor precarity and migrant belonging, developing the notion of belonging as both precarious and emancipatory.

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This contribution emphasizes emergencies' role in generating and perpetuating precarious conditions in the Italian asylum reception system, showcasing workers' agency and resistance both inside and outside the workplace.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years, 'crisis' and 'emergency' have been central in defining the contemporary experiences, particularly in socio-economic, political, and existential dimensions, with a focus on migration. The 'migration crisis' (2015) that significantly impacted Italy's asylum reception system shaped it with the 'paradigm of emergency'. The influx of arrivals led to a demand for personnel, forming a workforce primarily composed of highly educated young women with strong personal motivation. However, they grapple with uncertain labor contexts influenced by emergency rhetoric, disrupting both humanitarian and bureaucratic frameworks.

Within this system, labor conflicts and social friction emerge due to the precarious nature of those employed. This unfolds on both a socio-economic dimension, shaped by external forces, and an intimate, existential dimension arising from ruptures within one's 'teleology of life.' The resulting disorder, encompassing material and emotional aspects, outlines a complex existential condition, manifested in an ontological dimension through specific forms of self-representation. It stems from the feeling of being unable to 'navigate' the process, 'reach' the 'hoped-for near future,' or 'align' the present with personal aspirations, dismissing any 'promise of stability.'

Drawing from extensive ethnographic experience as a social operator and a researcher within the asylum reception system, this contribution emphasizes emergencies' role in generating and perpetuating precariousness in both labor and the intimate existential sphere, manifesting inside and outside the workplace. Ethnographically illustrating how workers in this social arena develop strategies to navigate and resist existential oppression demonstrates significant agency and the ability to critique and rethink the operative system.

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Paper short abstract:

Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong are vulnerable. This has historically and culturally developed, continuing to permeate these women lives. However, the processes of segregation and marginalization that occur are being challenged by the online relationships that these women engage in.

Paper long abstract:

The aim of this paper is to tackle the permanent vulnerability of Filipino domestic workers in Hong Kong by using an intersectional approach and by highlighting two different aspects of this vulnerability.

First I would like to show how the vulnerability of Filipino domestic workers was and it is still built through cultural and historical background of slavery and colonialism, conceptual metaphors, migration policies, and labour conditions. These factors play a major role in discourses at the media level and affect behaviours, attitudes and developments in the daily life of Filipino domestic workers. They are causes of the vulnerability which, at the same time, produces different processes of marginalization and segregation.

Second I would like to show how the domestic workers' perception of their own vulnerability is shown by the sharing of everyday difficulties, especially online, and this in turn seems to build an identity-based network, if not sisterhood, and a kind of soft-power activism. The online relationships become the field where segregation and marginalization are overcome and strategies of resistance and survival are produced.

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This paper explores gender in China's gig economy. Drawing on my one year ethnography in Guangdong, I reveal platform capitals' expectations for a masculine workforce. Couriers navigate (re)producing masculinities while contending with gendered algorithmic control, leading to masculinity crises.

Paper long abstract:

This paper investigates the role of gender in the labour control regime of the gig economy in China. It intends to shed light on how the labour control regime of the app-based work is shaped by gender ideologies surrounding masculinities, and how workers perceive and navigate gendered control.

Through my one-year ethnography including participant observation by working as a courier, in-depth interviews, online data in Guangdong, China, I find that the gender ideologies surrounding masculinities and stigmatised gendered discourse of migrant men have shaped platform capitals’ imaginaries on its workforce. The platform capitals expect a masculine workforce who is young and healthy, capable of manual labour including lifting heavy products, having good skills of riding a scooter, and able to expose their body in the public. However, they also see working-class men, which are mostly rural-to-urban migrants, as troublemaking, uncivilised, lazy, combative, sexually aggressive subjects.

On workers’ side, twofold processes coexist in the relationship between gender and labour. First, masculinities are (re/)produced through everyday interactions with fellow couriers, and engaging with their tools and technologies. Thus, couriers can construct masculine boundaries of couriering work, which builds up solidarity among them. Second, however, I argue that couriers suffer from gendered algorithmic control, which monitors and disciplines not only their labour process but also their gender performance. As a consequence, the sophisticated algorithmic control of workers’ delivery time and emotional labour not only undermines their labouring identities, but also results in masculinity crises.

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Against the backdrop of the constant movement and precarity for many Latinx workers in Barcelona's gig-economy, this paper will explore how the creation of an urban garden (huerto) provides an alternative sphere of slowness and non-monetised reciprocity.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will explore how, for some Latinx migrants, the growth and exchange of plants creates an alternative sphere to urban neoliberal precarity. Barcelona is made up by populations placed in hierarchies, each with their own rhythms of movement and displacement in the city's labour markets. I will focus on physical movement and frequent change as core experiential vectors that shape everyday migrant experience in the city. Stress, tiredness and the over-determination of inter-person dynamics through negative reciprocity ensue. Yet alternative paces exist. During my doctoral fieldwork (2022), I explored how Latinx migrants crafted an urban garden in the heart of the city. Plants provided care relations outside of economic exchange, uprooted plants drew threads of continuity between accommodation fluctuations while inter-ethnic exchanges were equalised outside of a racialised capitalist labour system.

Yet the very ecological shape of the huerto and styles of care within it reflected its place within a wider neoliberal rhythm of movement and change: the frequent removal and entry of plants, the limited space to put plants directly in the ground and the impossibility of food growth. In less diverse urban huertos, more stable work-hours and higher payment allowed for distinctly different cultivation methods, whereby the focus was on building up symbiotic, long-term inter-species dynamics within a "mini-ecosystem". I will conclude by exploring how manifestations of green spaces in the city and the grassroots wellness potentialities within them have to be understood in relation to neoliberal markets and the hierarchical inscription of citizens within this.

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Drawing from ethnographic fieldwork on Chinese online ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders, this paper critically examines platform workers' nuanced perceptions of precarity and their coping strategies. The research explores what is important and what gives their lives a sense of purpose.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to investigate the impact of digitally-mediated platform work on individuals’ daily lives, labour practices, and social relations by focusing on online ride-hailing drivers and food delivery riders in China. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted from July 2018 to September 2022 in a small city in southern China, this research attempts to challenge existing theories in platform work studies and to destabilise the critique of neoliberalism in the West. Existing studies on platform work mainly centre on labour precaritisation and exploitation, technical and algorithmic labour arrangements and control, and the legitimacy of platform work. This body of literature regards neoliberalism as either an economic system or a form of governmentality. Moreover, these studies view digital platforms as new means of control, depicting platform workers as victims of oppression and subjects of governance. My ethnographic research, however, suggests that platform work offers hope rather than mere deprivation. The overemphasis on the ‘dark’ side of platform work indicates a disengagement from the subjects’ nuanced understandings of precarity. Many studies concentrate solely on workers’ experiences on a specific platform, disregarding their broader life experiences; subjects are often reduced to being mere living sources of economic value. To address this issue, this research employs the life history method to critically examine the impact of platform work on individuals' life experiences. Based on my ethnographic research, individuals participate in platform work not only to make ends meet, but also to pursue freedom, happiness, and new meanings of life, and to fulfil familial obligations.