Precarious Work and Economic Migration: Emerging Immigrant Divisions of Labour in Greater London's Service Sector

The aim of this article is to assess the connections between the continued expansion of forms of insecure work and the impact of rising numbers of economic migrants employed in UK labour markets. It shows how competition between foreign-born workers for jobs in the UK is currently being recast by changes in the jobs available, in forms of precarious labour market attachment and by new patterns of migration into the UK since EU expansion in 2004. The article documents the ways in which migrants with different sets of social characteristics (nationality, gender and skin colour) and different sets of legal entitlements (legal citizenship, EU membership and entitlement to residence) are differentially placed in their competition for some of the poorest jobs in the British economy, drawing on an empirical study of the migrant divisions of labour emerging in two significant sectors in the service industries. It concludes by arguing that new and deeper divisions are emerging between foreign-born workers in the UK.