The British State and London s Migrant Division of Labour March 2006

Transcription

1 The British State and London s Migrant Division of Labour March 2006 Jon May, Jane Wills, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert and Cathy McIlwaine Department of Geography Queen Mary, University of London Mile End, London E1 4NS ISBN: X

2 ABSTRACT This paper explores the emergence of a new reserve army of labour in London. In contrast to a vision of professionalisation it shows that London s labour market too has been characterised by processes of occupational polarisation and that a disproportionate number of London s low-paid jobs are now filled by foreign-born migrants. Drawing on original survey data, the paper explores the pay and conditions of London s low-paid migrant workers and develops a framework for understanding the emergence of a new migrant division of labour in London. In particular, the paper stresses the role of the British State in shaping this divide. The paper concludes that the emergence of a new reserve army of labour in London necessitates a reconceptualisation of the place of migrant workers in the global city and of the processes shaping global city labour markets, and outlines what this new division of labour might mean for politics and policy in London. KEYWORDS: global cities; urban labour markets; migrant work/ers; the state; new urban politics 1

3 Introduction A worker s profile: Kobena is a 37 year old Ghanaian. In his home country he had acquired a first degree and worked in state housing. He came to the UK in 2003, and has since been a cleaner with the Underground. He has a long working week of 54 hours, and although it includes overtime, he earns the flat rate of 4.85 per hour. He has only 12 days of paid holiday a year, does not receive any sick pay, nor any additional pay (e.g. London Weighting) or other benefits from his employer. He supports four children in the UK, and also sends money to family abroad In his view, his employer does not care about [their] workers: They just want us to work. (Evans et al, 2005: 17) Within a burgeoning global cities literature, attention continues to focus on the extent to which different cities are characterised by processes of occupational and income polarisation, and the position of migrant workers in the global city labour market (for reviews see Norgaard, 2003; Samers, 2002). In the case of London, the conventional wisdom is that whilst recent decades have seen growing income polarisation there is little evidence of the occupational polarisation that has driven such change in the United States. Rather, London s labour market is argued to have under-gone processes of professionalisation (Buck, 1994; Buck et al, 2002; Hamnett, 1994a, 1996, 2003; Hamnett and Cross, 1998; Stark, 1992). For Hamnett, such differences can best be explained by the very different levels of immigration and different welfare regimes found in the two countries. Whilst high levels of immigration and minimal welfare provision have fuelled a growth in low-paid work in cities like New York and Los Angeles, the opposite is true in London: where a relatively generous welfare system and a more limited supply of migrant labour has restricted the growth of low-paid employment (Hamnett, 1994b, 1996). Whilst this picture of the London labour market may have been accurate in the early 1990s it is no longer tenable. New analyses of the Labour Force Survey suggest that alongside the growing number of professional and managerial jobs in London there has also been a small but significant rise in the number of low-paid jobs (Goos and Manning, 2005). Alongside this increase, rising levels of immigration have resulted in 2

4 a dramatic increase in the size of London s foreign-born population. As a result, a disproportionate number of London s low paid jobs are now filled by foreign-born migrants (Spence, 2005). Put simply, it appears that London too now has a marked migrant division of labour. Whilst others continue to focus on changes to the top end of the London labour market, here we examine instead changes at the bottom. In the first two parts of the paper we outline the limitations of a thesis of professionalisation, present evidence of growing occupational polarisation and of the emergence of a new migrant division of labour in London, and highlight the role that the British state has played in shaping this divide. Far from acting to protect workers from the worst excesses of low-paid work, we show how policies of labour market de-regulation, welfare reform and of managed migration have helped create a new reserve army of labour in London consisting mainly of low-paid migrant workers. In part three of the paper we draw upon a new survey of low-paid workers to examine the characteristics of London s low-paid workforce and the pay and conditions endured by people like Kobena. In the final part of the paper we consider the broader implications of our data. We suggest that the creation of a new reserve army of labour in London necessitates a reconceptualisation of the place of migrant workers in the global city and of the processes shaping global city labour markets. In the conclusion we examine some of the ethical and political issues that must be confronted if the true costs associated with such a reserve are to be addressed. Polarisation revisited: low-paid migrant labour in London In Sassen s orginal formulation of the Global City Hypothesis migrant labour played a prominent role. The broad contours of this thesis are now well known. Briefly, following a period of global economic restructuring, a small number of cities are understood to have emerged as key sites of command and control in the new global 3

5 economy: the cotter pins holding the capitalist world economy together (Feagin and Smith, 1987: 4, quoted in Baum, 1997: 1881). Within such cities, a shift from manufacturing to financial and business services employment is held to have led to marked occupational and income polarisation: with absolute growth at both the top and bottom end of the labour market and a falling out of the middle (Sassen, 1991). Growth at the bottom end, it is argued, has been further fuelled by a growing demand for low-paid workers to service the high-income lifestyles of an expanding professional and managerial class, produce the goods and services used by lowincome households themselves, and by the continuing informalisation of manufacturing employment (Sassen, 1996). Finally, the increased demand for lowwage workers has in turn encouraged a dramatic increase in levels of migration from the Global South to the Global North. As a result, a significant proportion of low-wage jobs in the global city are filled by foreign-born migrant workers; with the worst jobs falling to the most recent arrivals or those whose immigration status renders them ineligible for state welfare and who, especially if working illegally, have little choice but to accept the poorest quality jobs (Sassen, 1988). Since its original formulation, the Global Cities Hypothesis has been subject to sustained empirical scrutiny, with a number of studies exploring the extent to which different cities exhibit the polarised social structure Sassen describes, and the place of low-paid migrant workers in the global city labour market (for reviews see Norgaard, 2003; Samers, 2002). In the case of London, Hamnett has offered compelling evidence that whilst the city certainly witnessed income polarisation through the 1980s there is no evidence that this was accompanied by growing occupational polarisation. Instead, the past twenty years or so have seen a rapid professionalisation of the London labour market, with an absolute increase in the number of managers and professionals at the top end of the occupational hierarchy and an absolute and relative decline in every other socio-economic group - including 4

6 those employed in the kind of elementary occupations for which there is apparently such high demand in global cities (Hamnett, 1994a, 1996, 2003; Hamnett and Cross, 1998; for similar conclusions, Buck, 1994; Buck et al, 2002; Stark, 1992). In an effort to explain the rather different occupational and income structures found in cities in the United States and Europe, Hamnett points to important variations in the welfare state regimes and levels of immigration found in different countries (Hamnett, 1994b, 1996). Thus he suggests that one reason that London appears not to have experienced the same levels of growth at the bottom end of the labour market as have larger cities in the United States is because it lacks the large-scale supply of cheap migrant labour found in cities like New York and Los Angeles. At the same time, a more generous welfare safety net protects people from the worst excesses of the low-paid labour market. Hence he concludes that in many European countries [recent processes of economic restructuring] are more likely to create a large and growing unemployed and economically inactive group excluded from the labour force rather than a large, low-skilled and low-paid labour force. While this may be true in the US, with its large and growing immigrant labour force, willing to work for low wages (possibly forced to because of the limited nature of welfare provision) it is not necessarily true of all Western capitalist countries, and he argues, certainly not true of London (Hamnett, 1996: 1411; 2003). Hamnett s intervention in such debates has been enormously useful, sparking a range of studies investigating processes of occupational and income change in the global city (see, for example, Baum, 1997 on Sydney; Body-Grendot, 1996, and Rhein, 1998, on Paris; Burgers, 1996, and Kloosterman, 1996, on Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the Randstadtt). In contrast to the economic reductionism of earlier accounts (Friedman, 1986; Friedman and Wolff, 1982; Sassen, 1988, 1991, 1996), such studies point to the broad array of factors mediating the effects of economic 5

7 restructuring. One result of such arguments has been to open up a space for political agency. If, rather than flowing directly from processes of global economic restructuring, divisions in the global city are better understood as a result of the complex interplay of processes of economic restructuring, demographics and state policy, the outcome of such processes are not only path dependent, but open to change. Yet, following a number of important and ongoing changes in British labour market regulation, welfare and immigration policy it is not at all clear whether the picture of the London labour market Hamnett describes is still accurate. Most importantly, new evidence suggests that London too has recently been subject to processes of occupational polarisation - with a small but significant growth in the absolute number of jobs at the bottom end of the occupational hierarchy, a disproportionate number of which are filled by migrant workers (Goos and Manning, 2005;Spence, 2005). Contra Hamnett, then, in this paper we propose that a distinctive migrant division of labour is also emerging in London. Such a divide has clear echoes of Sassen s original thesis, but cannot be properly explained by her account of the dynamics shaping global city labour markets. Rather, we argue that the British State has had a far more active role in shaping this divide than either Sassen or Hamnett acknowledge. In the next section we briefly outline the main limitations of Hamnett s thesis of professionalisation, before providing our own account of the state s role in shaping growing divisions in the London labour market. Instead of restricting our analysis to an analysis of the ways in which the British welfare system mediates the effects of economic restructuring, we explore the ways in which the British welfare system, labour market policies and immigration practices have come together to heighten the effects of labour market change and facilitate the creation of a reserve army of labour consisting mainly of low-paid, migrant workers. Though by no means 6

8 restricted to the capital, the emergence of this reserve army is most evident in London and demands particular attention (for recent research examining the contribution and conditions of work of migrant workers in and beyond London see, Anderson and Rogaly, 2005; Evans et al, 2005; Holgate, 2004; Taylor and Rogaly, 2004; TUC, 2003; Winkelmann-Glebe et al, 2004). The British State and labour market dynamics We would argue that recent changes necessitate two important revisions to the substance of Hamnett s account. Firstly, in his desire to push forward a thesis of professionalisation rather than polarisation, Hamnett pays relatively little attention to the character and composition of London s low-paid labour force (Hamnett, 1994a, 1996, 2003). In contrast, disaggregating LFS data according to median levels of pay rather than by occupation, Goos and Manning (2003a and b) examine the rate of job growth in different wage bands of the British labour market. Contra Hamnett, they show that although there was indeed a significant increase in the number of top paying jobs in the UK between 1979 and 1999 (with increases of 25% and 70% respectively in deciles 9 and 10), the same period also saw a significant rise (40%) in the absolute number of jobs in the lowest paying decile. Hence they conclude that whichever way we look at it, there [has indeed been] a growing polarisation of jobs in the UK over recent decades (2003a: 77). In support of such claims Nolan (2000) shows how cleaners, domestics and retail workers have all recently taken their place amongst management consultants, computer engineers, and lawyers as Britain s fastest growing occupations. More importantly, when Goos and Manning s analysis is repeated for London rather than for the UK as a whole, very similar trends emerge: with a very large increase in the number of top paying jobs alongside a smaller but still significant rise in the number of very low paying jobs, and a falling out of the middle (Goos and Manning, 2005; Figure 1). 7

9 Whether or not one finds evidence of professionalisation, polarisation or proletarianisation depends to a degree at least upon the definitions and data deployed (Norgaard, 2003). But there is more at stake here than a numbers game. Implicit within Hamnett s thesis - of professionalisation at one end of the London labour market, and of (relatively) generous welfare provision for the growing numbers of individuals and households excluded from work at the other - is a sense of growth without costs. Yet, as research by the Greater London Authority (GLA) has shown, as many as 1 in 5 of London s workers earn less than 6.70 an hour (GLA, 2002). As well as low wages, such workers often endure extremely poor conditions of employment, working long or unsociable hours and without the benefits that those at the top end of the labour market take for granted: such as access to a pension 8

10 scheme, sick pay or maternity leave (Howarth and Kenway, 2004). Further, although it is true that economically inactive households account for the single largest group of households living in poverty in the British capital, as many as 37% of children living in poverty in London reside in households where at least one person works (GLA, 2002: 23). Whilst the work of Hamnett and others (Beaverstock, 1991; Beaverstock and Smith, 1996) has done much to illuminate recent changes at the top end of London s occupational hierarchy, it is clear that far more needs to be known about the pay and conditions endured by the many thousands of Londoners working at the bottom end of a professionalising labour market and about the impact of low-paid work on these households and families. Secondly, even if they were correct in the early 1990s, the distinctions Hamnett identifies regarding the supply of low-skilled migrant labour in the US and UK no longer hold. As Buck et al point out: the 1990s [was a period of] remarkable change with the emergence of comparably high rates of international migration into London from a range of poor countries (2002: 362). Indeed, so great has this increase been that foreign-born migrants now account for fully 35% of London s population, and 29% of its working age population (Spence, 2005). Its foreign born population is therefore considerably higher now than was New York s at the time of Hamnett s analysis - when the total foreign-born population of New York stood at 28% (Hamnett, 2003; 1994b: 408). More significantly, it is clear that foreign-born migrants do now make up a disproportionate share of London s low paid workforce. Using LFS and Census data that is likely to under rather than over-report the extent of such a phenomenon, Spence (2005) has shown that as many as 46% of all of London s elementary posts (domestic workers, cleaners, caretakers, porters, refuge collectors and labourers) are now filled by foreign-born migrants. There is also evidence that, just as in cities like 9

11 New York and Los Angeles, foreign-born migrants now make up a disproportionate share of particular segments of the city s low-paid labour force (Lagnado, 2004). For example, some 40.5% of working age people born in Slovakia now living in London work in personal services - as nursery nurses, housekeepers and care assistants (Spence, 2005). Countering Hamnett s assertion that there is little evidence of an army of low-wage [migrant] workers entering the personal service sector in Britain, it therefore appears that the number of foreign-born migrants working in London has increased significantly through the 1990s, with many moving in to precisely these kinds of jobs (Hamnett, 2003: 107). Conceptually, one of Hamnett s most important contributions is the role he ascribes to different welfare state regimes in mediating the effects of economic restructuring in the global city. But whilst questions can also be asked of his account of British welfare, we need to recognise that the state s role in the global city can not be restricted to a consideration of welfare provision (White, 1998). Rather, we need to consider the ways in which changing welfare state regimes interact with other aspects of state-craft - most notably, labour market (de)regulation and state immigration policies - to shape labour market dynamics (Baum, 1997). Most obviously, far from protecting London s workers from worsening pay and conditions via the provision of generous welfare payments, as Hamnett implies, Conservative governments of the 1980s and early 1990s in fact worked remarkably hard to secure a competitive advantage for Britain in a changing world economy through the twin policies of labour market de-regulation and welfare restructuring. Hence, the de-regulation of the London Stock Exchange in the early 1980s, for example, signalled an attempt by central government to secure London s position as a major centre of the global financial industries and of managerial and professional employment (Thrift and Leyshon, 1994). At the other end of the labour market, the 10

12 same period saw a sustained attack on trade unions, the abolition of the Wages Councils, the privatisation of key public services, and the introduction of the market through compulsory competitive tendering in Local Authorities and market testing in the NHS (Wills, 2004). Coupled with significant reductions in both the real value of benefits and in the numbers of people eligible for benefits, such policies sought to foster increased flexibility at the bottom end of the labour market. The central tenets underpinning labour market and welfare reform in the Conservative era labour market flexibility allied with a benefits system designed to boost rather than restrict the supply of workers to the low-paid economy - have been maintained if not strengthened under New Labour. Thus, the introduction of the New Deal, for example, has introduced even greater compulsion in to the benefits system. At the same time, the increased targeting of the young and long term unemployed, of lone parents and, more recently, of those in receipt of incapacity benefit, have all sought to move people off benefits and in to what is often low-paid work (see, for example, Peck, 2001, 2004; Sunley, Martin and Nativel, 2001). In fact, such initiatives had remarkably little effect on levels of unemployment and economic inactivity in London, both of which remained significantly higher in London than elsewhere in the UK through out the 1990s (GLA, 2002). None-the-less, at the close of the decade employers continued to complain of a shortage of workers at both the top and bottom ends of the labour market. Shortages were reported to be particularly acute at the bottom end, with the Learning and Skills Council reporting almost three times as many vacancies in elementary occupations as in professional and managerial positions across the UK as a whole in 2004 (Learning and Skills Council, 2005). Having already restricted benefits, the most obvious way of addressing a continued shortfall of workers in a tight labour market without significantly raising wages was therefore to turn to new sources of labour. 11

13 During the 1970s and 80s a succession of British governments adopted immigration policies aimed at restricting the number of people settling in Britain. But by the early 1990s, new flows of refugees and asylum seekers, the growing ease of international travel and the opening up of an internal market in the European Union meant that governments were less able to control immigration than had once been the case (Favell and Hansen, 2002). Coupled with employer demands to improve the system of work permit allocation, and to find new ways to fill vacancies, the New Labour Government made a dramatic shift in immigration policy. Such a shift is most clearly articulated in its 2002 White Paper Secure Borders, Safe Haven which set out a programme of managed migration aimed at simultaneously restricting levels of asylum and illegal immigration whilst encouraging the flow of temporary migration in the interests of the UK economy (Flynn, 2005a; Morris, 2002). Most importantly, under this new regime of managed migration the New Labour government has sought to attract growing numbers of both highly skilled and lowskilled workers to Britain, with an expansion of existing temporary worker schemes and the addition of new programmes. As a result, the number of people legally entering Britain to work has risen very considerably over recent years, with the number of work permits issued to foreign-born workers increasing from around 40,000 a year in the mid-1990s to over 200,000 a year in 2004 (Flynn, 2005a). But, managed migration has also introduced a strict hierarchy of classes of entry and associated privileges: ranging from the right to settle for the highly skilled, to only temporary admission with no rights to benefits for the low-skilled (RSA Migration Commission, 2005). Similar restrictions on benefit receipt have been imposed upon the growing number of workers coming to Britain from the A8 Accession Countries the supply of which, it is hoped by government, will eventually reduce Britain s reliance on low-skilled workers from beyond the EU (TUC, 2003). 12

14 Even whilst he contrasts the more generous welfare provision of the British welfare state with its US counterpart, the distinctions Hamnett (1996) draws between a system designed to promote the supply of workers to the low-paid economy (as in the US) with one that acts to restrict that supply, are therefore not nearly as clear cut as he would suggest. In fact, under New Labour work and welfare in Britain have moved significantly closer to a North American model (Deacon, 2000; Peck, 2001; Theodore and Peck, 1998). As importantly, far from being equally available to all, benefits are now tied in to a complex hierarchy of eligibility depending upon a person s immigration and residency status 1. As a result, rather than high levels of unemployment signalling a lack of growth at the bottom end of the labour market - as Hamnett argues - the combination of still relatively high levels of unemployment together with steadily increasing demand for low-paid workers in service jobs seems to have been crucial in producing a high demand for foreign-born migrant workers in the UK: at least in part because such workers are not necessarily eligible for the same welfare benefits as their British born counterparts (RSA Migration Commission, 2005) This analysis therefore suggests that far from acting to protect workers from the worst excesses of the low-paid economy, the British state has in fact actively sought to facilitate the recruitment of migrant labour whilst restricting people s access to welfare. The result, as Morris has argued, is an expanding army of actively recruited migrant labour [alongside] an underground population of both rejected asylum 1 Eligibility for state benefits in Britain is determined by a complex set of factors the most important of which, in the current context at least, is whether a person is considered ordinarily resident in Britain. The conditions of ordinary residency are not set by statute and tend to be established on a case by case basis according to case law. Importantly, however, key groups are excluded from residency and thus claiming benefits: most notably, low-skilled workers entering Britain on a short-term work permit or through one of a range of sector based quota schemes. Workers moving to Britain from the A8 Accession Countries can only claim benefits once registered on the Workers Registration Scheme (and resident in Britain on a continual basis) for at least 12 months. For further information see Allamby (2005). 13

15 seekers and undocumented migrants existing with minimal rights in the interstices of the economy (Morris, 2004: 25). Some indication of the extent to which London s economy depends on such workers, and the nature of their pay and conditions, is presented in the following sections. Opening a window on to low-paid work in London Building an accurate picture of London s low-paid work force, and of the role of foreign-born migrant workers in that section of the labour market, is extremely difficult. Whilst large data sets such as the Labour Force Survey and the Census of Population shed some light on the characteristics of this population, their origins and income, there are major limitations to the data. Not least, whilst the LFS offers an extensive picture of the distribution of earnings in London, it tells us very little about a person s country of origin (Spence, 2005). Likewise, the Census is thought to cover only 85% of London s true population, with migrant groups amongst those most likely to be missing (Simpson, 1996). Neither the LFS or Census include information on those living or working illegally in Britain (Cox and Watt, 2002) and no published data set provides detailed information about the pay and conditions associated with particular jobs alongside information about the kinds of people doing those jobs. Whilst recognising the value of the extensive coverage that data sets like the LFS and Census provide, it is therefore imperative that we build a more detailed picture of London s low-paid workforce. To do so the authors worked in partnership with London Citizens Living Wage Campaign and Summer Academy. Through July 2005 a team of 11 researchers completed a structured questionnaire with 341 workers in four sectors of the London economy known to employ high numbers of low paid workers: contract cleaning; hospitality and catering; home care; and the food processing industry. The questionnaire focused on people s pay and conditions, the means by which they had found work, their household circumstances and receipt of 14

16 benefits and (where appropriate) reasons for migrating to London. Some open-ended questions were also included to capture a sense of people s experiences of and attitudes towards low-paid work. Access to workers was facilitated by trade union representatives or by snowballing: using existing contacts with known workers to make contact with other respondents. Otherwise, a random sample of respondents was contacted directly outside of their workplace. Respondents working to clean the London Underground, for example, were approached at work in over 40 stations as well as at one line depot in North London. For the other sectors, some respondents were approached at or near their workplaces or employment agencies, with others completing the questionnaire outside of working hours in agreed locations such as cafes. Within the home care sector, some questionnaires were conducted by telephone and, in one instance, through self -completion in a focus group. Most interviewers were fluent in languages other than English, including Polish, Portuguese, Spanish and French and this proved vital in both making contact and communicating with respondents. The relatively small number of people interviewed, and mixed sampling frame, means that we cannot claim the data is truly representative of all low paid employment in London. However, it offers a much more detailed picture of London s low-paid workforce than can be traced through other sources. Importantly, results from each sector and different interviewers corroborate - suggesting common trends across London s low-paid labour market. In what follows we highlight the most salient aspects of our findings with regards to the position and experiences of foreign-born migrant workers in London. In the final parts of the paper we explore the wider significance of the data for understanding and responding to changing employment patterns and an emergent migrant division of labour in particular - in global cities like London. 15

17 Low paid work and London s migrant division of labour Several aspects of the survey results are pertinent to the current discussion. Most obviously, perhaps, despite being targeted at low-paid workers in general rather than only foreign-born migrants, the survey highlighted the extraordinary preponderance of migrants in London s low-paid economy. Indeed, in contrast to studies drawing on LFS and Census data, which suggest a little under half of London s elementary occupations are now filled by foreign-born migrants, fully 90% of those interviewed were born outside of the UK with as many has half arriving in Britain in the last five years (c.f. Spence, 2005). Though people reported entering the UK under a range of circumstances (as asylum seekers, au pairs, working holiday makers, EU citizens and partners of British citizens) the vast majority (92%) had come directly to London, with a quarter (25%) reporting they had come in search of work. Contrary to popular images of the lone sojourner, however, the majority of interviewees were not in living in London alone. Nor were they especially young. More than half were in their thirties or older, 40% lived with a partner, and just over a third (34%) with other family members or friends. Significantly, as many as 25% (81 people) lived with their dependent children at home, and a further 8% had responsibility for other children under 16 living outside their home but in the UK. As might be expected, many of the respondents who lived in households with other adults and/or children depended on the income of other adults in work. In the majority of cases, the second earner was the respondent's spouse or partner. Most partners were also employed in low-paying jobs, such as cleaners (25%), customer service assistants at supermarkets, security guards or bus drivers. Secondly, the data illustrates the marked changes that have taken place in patterns of migration to the UK in recent decades (Dobson et al, 2001). In the post-war period 16

18 migration to Britain was dominated by people from the New Commonwealth countries, and in particular from the Caribbean and South Asia. In contrast, the last fifteen years has seen a much greater diversity in the origin of migrant groups, giving rise to what has been referred to as super-diversity amongst London s foreign-born population (Vertovec, 2005). Mirroring these trends, our data showed that although as many of half of those interviewed were born in Sub-Saharan Africa (notably, Ghana and Nigeria) very significant numbers had come from other regions (with 13.6% from Latin America and the Caribbean, and 9.5% from Eastern and Central Europe) with as many as 56 countries of origin recorded across the sample population as a whole. Thirdly, this diversity was reflected in the employment histories and skill sets of the workers encountered. Most importantly, although these workers were found doing jobs that are generally characterised as unskilled, many had been employed in more highly skilled work before moving to the UK. Almost half of those interviewed (49%) had tertiary level qualifications (including either academic or vocational training) and about 20% were studying at the time of the research. Thus, even whilst academics and policy makes continue to draw distinctions between skilled and unskilled migrant labour in Britain, it is important to recognise that a significant proportion of the latter may be made up of those who have experienced considerable de-skilling on entry to the British labour market (Raghuram and Kofman, 2004). Fourthly, in common with other studies, the relative concentration of foreign-born migrants differed across sectors: ranging from 95% of those cleaning the Underground, to 93% in hospitality, 89% in office cleaning and a low of 56% of workers in the care sector (where, significantly, both pay and conditions of employment were notably better) (for the hospitality industry, see Church and Frost, 2004; for care, see Wills, 2003). Likewise, perhaps because the majority of 17

19 respondents (63%) had found their current position through personal contacts, the data revealed a marked tendency towards ethnic segregation at the bottom end of the London labour market (see also Hagan, 1998). For example, Black Africans (particularly those from Nigeria and Ghana) made up over three-quarters of the surveyed workforce cleaning London s Underground. They also represented the largest single share of all workers in cleaning and other services (37%). At the same time, whilst 25.6% of those working in office cleaning were from Latin America, fully 71.7% of people from Latin America interviewed worked in office cleaning (c.f. Lagnado, 2004). Divisions of labour in the hotel and hospitality sector were more diverse and seemed to reflect changing patterns of immigration. Hence, whilst fully two-fifths of workers were Non-British Whites (many, as traditionally in this sector, coming from Southern Europe and Portugal in particular) a growing proportion (27.5%) of these were from Central and Eastern Europe mainly Poland and Lithuania. Unexpectedly, the sample of respondents was almost equally divided between men (53%) and women (47%). But just as we encountered distinctive groupings of people from particular countries or regions by workplace and sector, this was overlain by differences in the way in which occupations were gendered. Men and women were often found to be doing quite different jobs. Women typically worked in semi-private spaces such as in hotels (with 58.5% of hotel workers being women), and in the case of care work, the houses of clients (81.5% of workers in this sector). In contrast, men were more likely to work in semi-public spaces - such as cleaning in offices (with 70% of workers being men) or on the Underground (64% of workers). Fifthly, and least surprisingly, though pay and conditions varied across sectors - mainly as a result of different experiences of de-regulation and sub-contraction in different parts of London s low-paid economy - the survey revealed the very low rates 18

20 of pay these workers receive. The lowest rates of pay and worst conditions of employment were found in the hotel and hospitality sector and on the London Underground, where processes of sub-contraction and the use of agency staff are most developed. Amongst those cleaning London s Underground, for example, only 2% earned more than the London Living Wage (LLW), just 19% paid in to a company pension and only 17% received an annual pay rise 2. Amongst hotel and hospitality workers only 12% of workers earned more than the LLW, 78% had no annual pay rise, and two-thirds no company pension. Most underground and office cleaners alike had only the statutory minimum holiday entitlement (20 days including bank holidays), no sick pay and no extra overtime pay. In contrast, almost half of the care workers interviewed earned between 5.51 and 6.69 an hour and a further 40% more than the LLW. Nearly two-fifths (38.6%) of workers had access to a company pension scheme, and 47% reported receiving an annual pay rise. Significantly, care work was the only sector where (some) workers had their conditions of employment protected by TUPE having transferred to agencies from the public sector. Importantly, such differences will inevitably erode with time as new staff are employed on inferior terms and conditions (Wills, 2001). At one hotel in London s West End, for example, new housekeeping staff recruited via an agency are now being paid by the room. Expected to clean 15 rooms in a day, at 1.70 a room, these mainly Polish workers represented a clear threat to the already meagre pay and conditions enjoyed by in-house staff. Indeed, a considerable number of respondents in every sector reported that they felt threatened by the arrival of new groups of workers from the accession countries (the A8) of Eastern Europe who were often being recruited on inferior terms and conditions of work. 2 The Living Wage Campaign was launched by the East London Communities Organisation (now part of London Citizens) in Following pressure from London Citizens the Mayor of London has recently set up a Living Wage Unit at the Greater London Authority. Recognising the very high cost of 19

21 More generally, average rates of pay were extremely low. The vast majority (90%) of workers interviewed were earning below the London Living Wage and one in every five earned only the National Minimum Wage. Average earnings for the sample as a whole were just 5.45 an hour (Table 1). The majority reported that they worked only the one job, with no other sources of earnings. Working on average 36 hours a week, this translated in to an average annual salary of just 10,200 a year before tax and National Insurance deductions: less than half national average earnings ( 22,411) and less than a third of the London average annual salary ( 30,984) (Guardian Unlimited, 2005). Table 1: Respondents Hourly Rates of Pay Hourly Rate No % < Between 4.86 and Between 5.51 and and over No response = 14 Total Finally, the survey challenges accounts that position such workers as mainly working on the fringes of the formal economy and highlights the ways in which the British benefits system disadvantages migrant workers. Rather than working off the books, living in London, the Unit has called for the introduction of a Living Wage of 6.70 an hour: some way above the National Minimum which was set at 5.05 an hour at the time of the research. 3 Ten of those workers who earned below the National Minimum Wage worked in hospitality. The majority of these comprised chambermaids who were paid piece-rates of around 2 per cleaned room. According to them, the pay rate was based on the management s assumption that two rooms can be cleaned in one hour, on average. The remaining two workers who earned below the NMW were found in the cleaning and other services category. 20

22 the vast majority of people interviewed (86%) had formalised written work contracts, received pay slips from their employers (95%) and paid both tax and National Insurance contributions (94%). Even so, just 16% of workers or their partners claimed any kind of state benefits. Of those that did, over one quarter claimed Working Tax Credits, which are specifically designed to top up the earnings of working people on low earnings. Even amongst those with dependent children under 16 at home, only one third claimed Child Benefit and/or Child Tax Credits. Such low uptake may be because people were ineligible for state benefits, or eligible but not claiming. But it certainly casts doubt on those who would present the British benefits system as protecting workers from the worst excesses of low-paid employment. Re-conceptualising global city labour markets In light of such data we would argue that conventional accounts of the London labour market are out of date. Though recent years have certainly seen a dramatic growth in the number of highly paid professional and managerial workers in London, the same period has also seen a rise in the number of poorly paid, low-skilled workers (Goos and Manning, 2005). The divide in London s labour market is therefore no longer simply one between those in work and those excluded from the labour market, as scholars like Hamnett have argued. There is also a growing divide between those in the best paying jobs and the tens of thousands of low-paid workers toiling to keep London working. Though such workers seem largely invisible to the wider public and academic commentators alike, their plight deserves far more attention. Not least, a very significant proportion if not the vast majority - of these workers are foreignborn migrants, working long and unsociable hours for extremely low rates of pay and without the protection afforded native workers by Britain s benefits system. 21

23 Such a picture raises a number of critical questions about how best to make sense of the place of migrant workers in the global city, about the processes driving change in global city labour markets, and about the most appropriate ethical and political responses to such changes. Four issues are of particular importance. First, existing accounts of the global city and of the position of low-paid migrant workers in the global city labour market are too restricted. Within the global cities literature the demand for migrant workers tends to be attributed to either a growing demand for low-wage workers to service the high-income lifestyles of an expanding cohort of professional and managerial workers (Sassen, 1991) or to an expansion of informal economic activities and of the grey economy (Cox and Watt, 2002; Samers, 2002). Both may be important. But in London at least the demand for such workers goes much deeper. Most obviously, though we found some evidence of illegal practices by both employers and employees (the withholding of wages from those lacking permission to work, for example, or the purchase of National Insurance numbers in order to secure a job) the vast majority of workers interviewed held formal contracts of employment with bona-fide companies and paid both tax and National Insurance (see also McIlwaine, 2005). Nor is there much evidence that they supplemented their wages with work in the grey economy. Rather, for most, the job about which they were interviewed was their only source of employment. Further, whilst many had been specifically attracted to London rather than to cities elsewhere, they came to London for a variety of reasons. Certainly, though many came in search of work, they did not come to take up positions in personal services or to work in the City s booming financial and producer services industries. And once in London they took up a range of positions: cleaning London s officers, but also caring for London s elderly, cleaning its universities, and keeping its transport system 22

24 working. Rather than restrict our accounts of migrant workers to their role in servicing those functions usually attributed to a city s global city status then, we need to recognise the role such workers play in keeping the city as a whole working. In doing so, definitions of the global city are broadened. Instead of hinging upon the presence of business and producer services, a city s global status might be analysed through very different kinds of flows and connections (Robinson, 2002). Amongst the workers interviewed here, a third had dependants living overseas, and two-thirds regularly sent financial remittances to people in other countries. These trans-national connections provide a quite different lens through which to view a city s global status and suggest that a growing number of citys in the UK are global cities in some sense at least (King, 1990). Indeed, although the divisions explored here are especially marked in London, the number of low-paid migrant workers is increasing in other British cities too (see, for example, Stenning et al, 2006 on similar such divisions in Newcastle and the north-east of England). Second, conventional analyses of the global city work with a very limited notion of the processes shaping change in global city labour markets and with only a poor understanding of the scale at which such processes unfold (White, 1998). In Sassen s original thesis, for example, the political factors shaping recent changes in global city labour markets, and the role of the state in particular in shaping such change, are almost entirely dismissed. Instead, these changes are understood as the result of global economic processes impacting upon and shaping local conditions in an era when the nation state can do little to effect, or resist, such processes. Whilst Hamnett moves to re-insert the role of the nation-state, his account of the state is restricted to an assessment of its ability to mediate the effects of such processes. In fact, the recent restructuring of the world economy is itself the result of complex political processes unfolding at a range of scales: most notably perhaps the liberal 23

25 economic experiments championed by the Thatcher-Reagan governments of the 1980s, and the extension of neo-liberal policy pronouncements from the World Bank and the IMF in the 1990s. These developments helped to create and proselytise a model of the economy within which low-paid employment has flourished in the advanced western economies. Thus, enforced fiscal austerity, labour market deregulation, a rolling back of state welfare and significant state investment in the financial and business services sector have all helped hasten processes of deindustrialisation, foster growth in financial and business services, laid the groundwork for the consumer boom that has underpinned a more general shift to service employment and helped create a more flexible labour market in north America, Western Europe and Australasia. In the Global South and Central and Eastern Europe, the imposition of structural adjustment programmes have fostered the development of a free market economy and hastened a decline in public sector expenditure. Both have had profound impacts on London; the first fuelling an expansion in jobs at the top and bottom of the London labour market, the second contributing to the increased flow of migrant workers to fill vacancies at the bottom end. Rather than separate out the economic from the political, then, we need to recognise that the economy is itself a political construction (Mitchell, 2002). Likewise, instead of holding apart the global and the local, we need to embrace a relational view of scale: examining the variety of scales at which processes shaping global city labour markets unfold, and the manner in which processes operating at one scale help constitute processes operating at another (Brenner, 1998; McCann, 2004). In the case of London, it is clear that many of the ideas shaping the development of the new global economy emerged in London itself - from government and quasi-governmental organisations, think tanks and analysts in the 1980s and 1990s (Massey, 2004a). 24

26 Within London too the state has done far more than simply mediate the effects of global economic restructuring, playing a vital and active role in shaping recent developments in the London labour market: ranging from the provision of generous grants to help develop London s Docklands (designed to facilitate an expansion of London s business and financial industries) (Smith, 1989) to more direct attempts to shape the city s labour market through both supply and demand side management. On the demand side, labour market de-regulation has provided the conditions in which the demand for low-paid employment has grown. On the supply side, a restructuring of state welfare has provided an impetus for workers to move off benefits and in to (low-paid) employment, whilst changes to state immigration policies have facilitated an increased flow of foreign-born migrants in to those jobs that still remain unattractive to native workers. Rather than simply dismiss the nation-state, or restrict a consideration of its role to attempts to mediate global economic change, then, we want to advocate a genuine political-economy of the global city, one in which the state is once again placed centre-stage (see also Samers, 2003; Favell and Hansen, 2002). Third, if such an approach is to be taken forward it may be time to dust-off some familiar but increasingly neglected concepts. Most obviously, given the recent direction of British immigration policy - in which migrant workers are treated less as potential citizens than units of labour, the supply of which can (in theory at least) be turned on and off as the needs of the British economy dictate - it is difficult to escape the conclusion that what we are witnessing is the most explicit attempt yet by the British state to create a new reserve army of labour (Flynn, 2005b). Activists are in little doubt about such a move. As Don Flynn has argued: The common denominator across the range of different procedures [introduced under managed migration] is that employers call the shots in determining the shape of a labour market that 25

27 [makes] more effective use of migrant workers [this includes] deciding the rights available to workers [for] family reunification, long-term settlement, access to welfare and other state benefits, etc Under the terms of managed migration, the migrant s duty is to be useful, first and foremost, to established business, and only after that to him/herself (Flynn, 2005a: pp477 and 481). If we are to deploy such a concept, however, it is important to avoid the limitations of earlier work in this vein. This tended both to overemphasise the ability of the state to manage such a reserve, and reduce the role of the state to always and only acting in the (short term) interests of capital (see, for example, Castells, 1975; Castles and Kosack, 1973; Castles, 1984). In contrast, given the continued rise in the number of people entering the European Union illegally, Favell and Hansen (2002) point to the obvious difficulties that states face in restricting the movement of foreign workers in to and across the EU. In a similar vein Duvell and Jordan (2003) outline a series of systemic weaknesses in the British immigration service that make it unlikely that immigration officials will ever be able to detect or expel a significant proportion of those living or working in the UK illegally. Although it is difficult to deny that the recent shift to managed migration reflects New Labour s pro-business agenda, it is also clear other actors too have been important in shaping British immigration policy in recent years. Not least, sustained public pressure to clamp down on the number of people entering Britain illegally has led New Labour to adopt a much tougher stance on asylum and applications for residency, even as they have sought to open up Britain s boarders to legitimate economic migrants. Managed migration may therefore best be understood as an attempt by the British state to respond to apparently contradictory pressures: enabling it to appear both tough on immigration, and as acting in the interests of British business - at a time when, to the British public at least, the two might seem to 26