Paper short abstract:

This immersive ethnography of migrant night workers shows how they have turned into bio-automatons - human bodies subordinated to capital gains through disinvestment. This paper focuses on the embodied dimension among the multi-layers of precarity related by two respondents and the anthropologist.

Paper long abstract:

This fine-grained, immersive ethnography of migrant night workers shows how they have turned into bio-automatons - human bodies subordinated to capital gains through disinvestment. In global cities, characterised by occupational polarisation of the labour market (Sassen 2001), some bodies, like those of cleaners, taxi drivers, market workers, are disinvested, while others, like those of highly paid executives, are taken care of and fostered (Sharma 2013). While taking these and other discussions on the human movement and the global city seriously, the impetus of this paper is to interrogate main categories underlying them, thereby opening up the discussion to issues normally not considered together. Key among these categories to be investigated are the concepts of embodied precarity, seen as a dimension of precarity not a new notion, and nightwork and migrant bodies characterised by disinvestment and invisibility from the rest of the 24/7 society. This paper unpacks and explains not only the embodied kind but also the multi-layers of precarity on the basis of experiences of precarious night workers related by two protagonists and the anthropologist.