Join us for the launch of The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialisation of Precarity by Panos Theodoropoulos, a new book exploring the ways precarity is lived and contested in Glasgow's warehouses, factories and kitchens.

Hsiao-Hung Pai's 'Book of the Year': "Brilliantly researched and original. The research of the book is clearly painstaking."

Migrant workers in the West are at the frontline of the precarious condition that is coming to dominate economic life in neoliberal societies. Yet despite the highly insecure and exploitative working conditions they routinely face, labour mobilizations by precarious workers are rare.

In this immersive portrait of the daily realities of precarious migrant labour, Panos Theodoropoulos found work in Glasgow’s warehouses, factories and kitchens to uncover the ways that precarity is lived and contested. Connecting the realms of structure, subjectivity and culture, his analysis shows that precarity not only dictates workers' labour conditions, but socializes them in an individualist, survival-oriented struggle that erodes solidarities and enforces its own neoliberal logic. Crucially, however, precarity and the wider neoliberal culture are unable to erase workers’ material awareness and experience of class injustice. It is on this basis that the foundations of new forms of struggle must be laid.

Blending interviews, ethnographic notes and social theory, The Precarious Migrant Worker offers a unique glimpse into our increasingly precarious social reality and will be a valuable resource for scholars, students and activists interested in issues of migration, precarity and resistance.

About the event

The event will include the book's author, Panos Theodoropoulos, introducing the main contributions of the book and reflecting on the current and historical state of precarious and migrant labour organising in the UK. The invited speakers will then contribute their insights in relation to the wider themes of migration, bordering, precarity, and resistance in the UK. The event will conclude with an open discussion, with members of the audience warmly encouraged to participate.

Speakers

• Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship, University of Bristol.
• Yasmin Gunaratnam, Professor in Social Justice, King's College London.
• Valentine Guruuswa, General Secretary of the Pan African Workers Association
• Marley Davies, Industrial Workers of the World

The event will be chaired by Professor Andrew Smith of the University of Glasgow.