Paper short abstract:

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.