Vulnerability, Exploitation and Migrants

"This wide ranging volume explores the relation between migration, exploitation and globalisation from multiple perspectives, bringing together diverse experiences from the global north and the global south. It exposes the structural underpinnings of the production of vulnerability through the lack of global governance of labour relations, and the stringency of global citizenship regimes. Setting ethnographic and qualitative studies of migrants alongside political economic analysis of neoliberal capitalist development it provides fascinating analysis of how global capital impacts on daily lives, and offers some examples of how to fight back." - Bridget Anderson, University of Oxford, UK

"Read this book. It is a work of solidarity and is both urgent and unique. Urgent because it engages directly with the structural reasons why migrant workers are especially likely to face work-place exploitation. It is thus a call for action in dangerous times. Unique because of its breadth in encompassing both analysis of migrant workers' own strategies to manage harsh working and living conditions across contrasting global contexts and understanding of the neoliberal policies and business practices that create those conditions. Clear in its overall message, the book rightly steers readers towards the diversity of migrant workers' experiences, and to an appreciation and respect for the agency of migrants themselves, even in conditions where victories may only be small, and changes fleeting." - Ben Rogaly, University of Sussex, UK

"Neoliberal globalisation is exacerbating inequality, and creating new forms of exploitation on the basis of race, gender, origins and - above all - legal status. This invaluable book explores the special vulnerability of migrant workers and asylum seekers. It examines the political economy of the production of vulnerability, while case studies from Europe, Latin America and Asia reveal the everyday reality of exploitation and precarity. But the authors do not simply lament such abuses: they map out strategies to fight for the rights of vulnerable workers and to build global citizenship." - Stephen Castles, University of Sydney, Australia