Martin Deutsch/Flickr. Creative Commons.
National government policies seek to facilitate the movement of some individuals while immobilising others. ‘Good migrants’, who have relatively easy access to visas and to the labour market, often find work in well-paid, highly skilled jobs. In contrast, those seeking work in low-skilled, low-paid, and less formalised sectors are generally made to feel less welcome. Although understood to be necessary for the capitalist economy, states attempt to deter this latter group from coming or to encourage them to leave, including by attenuating their access to legal and social protections.
These migrants thus frequently find themselves living in situations of precarity; many work illegally, many are highly vulnerable to exploitation. Such migrants are oftentimes framed as victims or as ‘modern slaves’, but, depending on the context, they are also referred to as criminals and as drains on society. The UK’s 2015 Immigration Bill, which is currently making its way through the British parliament, takes the latter approach by framing migrant labour as a threat to national economic security. If passed into law, this new bill will exacerbate the vulnerability of migrant workers and further undermine their ability to exert rights. The articles in this series lay bare the flaws of the bill and demonstrate the ways in which they will compound the problems faced by migrant labour in the United Kingdom.
