Rydzik, A. orcid.org/0000-0001-6937-8608 and Anitha, S. orcid.org/0000-0002-6918-3680 (2020) Conceptualising the agency of migrant women workers: resilience, reworking and resistance. Work, Employment and Society, 34 (5). pp. 883-899. ISSN 0950-0170
Abstract
This article examines migrant women tourism workers’ understandings of, and diverse responses to, exploitative working conditions by taking account of the constraints posed by oppressive contexts and ideologies. It analyses how their location at the intersection of multiple axes of disadvantage and discrimination on account of gender, ethno-nationality, immigration status and migration history as well as their low-status employment and educational level, shapes both their understandings of particular experiences of exploitation and possible responses to these, and examines the effects of their practices upon the power structures at work. Based on the experiences of eleven women from Central and Eastern European countries working in the UK tourism industry, this article theorises workers’ responses to hyperexploitative employment relations by utilising a differentiated conceptualisation of agency as practices of resilience, reworking and resistance. In doing so, it rejects binary categories of victimhood and agency, as well as romanticised accounts of unmitigated resistance.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Author(s). This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Work, Employment and Society. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | agency; exploitation; gender and migration; migrant women; resistance; tourism employment |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Sociological Studies (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Feb 2024 12:57 |
Last Modified: | 07 Feb 2024 16:36 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/0950017019881939 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:208880 |
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