Paper Short Abstract:

This article uses the notion of the “body multiple” to examine shifting subjectivities that emerged through ethnographic work in a German packaging factory. Focusing on my perceived embodiments – marked as both historical kin and a class-based outsider – it investigates how labour and belonging are relationally negotiated in migration and factory work, raising ethical and political questions about "value" and "human worth".

Paper Abstract:

This article engages with the concept of the “body multiple” to explore the layered and shifting subjectivities that emerged during my ethnographic research on post-Soviet migration, work, and worth in a male-dominated packaging factory in Germany. Placing the emphasis on ethnographer’s body, I illuminate how my own perceived positionality – shaped by notions of class, (in)experience with hard labour, and cultural displacement – became a critical reference point for my interlocutors to reflect on the spectrum of valuable versus disposable work and how their own labour as assembly line workers is situated within it.

I structure my argument around my two contrasting perceived embodiments, which raise critical questions about the ethics and politics of labour in the context of migration and work. On one hand, I was often marked as svoi – a Russian-language term denoting kinship or historical familiarity – as someone who understands a shared morality of work and progress due to my own migratory and socialist background. On the other hand, I was simultaneously aligned with the company managers who, in the eyes of my interlocutors, had not yet learned the meaning of “real work” but still enjoyed social recognition and belonging that they lacked. Against this backdrop, their own bodies seemed to lose significance, rendering both their labour and themselves disposable. Situated within this ambivalent, often conflicting, perspective, I reflect on how both my interlocutors and I, as a researcher, sought to make sense of what “proper work” entails in relation to one another.