Master´s Thesis, 30 Credits – MA in Ethnic and Migration Studies (EMS) ISRN: LiU-IKOS/EMS-A--20/17--SE
The Labour-market
Experiences of Skilled African
Women in Sweden
– The Case of Kenyan Women
Fortune Chanelle Mugororoka
Acknowledgement
I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor Zoran Zlavanic, Associate Professor who helped me structure my ideas initially as well as along the way. I am also grateful to Anna Martin, Study Adviser who helped me to start the program in Migration Studies at Linköping University, and Anna Bedström- Senior Lecturer who encouraged me to participate in the lectures with my son. I am also grateful to my son, Isaac Max Höjer Mugororoka for being so calm during all the journeys from Stockholm to Norrköping and during all the lectures. Special thanks to my sister Lyse Bella Arakaza who helped and gave me the courage to finish this thesis. I am thankful for my husband Jakob Max Höjer for the love and patience. Inger & Johan Höjer you also made my journey of writing this thesis a lot easier.
Much appreciation to Vivian Omdal who helped me find the participants for the study and introduced me to them during the difficult times of the pandemic. I am grateful for the participants who made themselves available for the study- without them this thesis would not have been done.Special thanks to Felicity Okoth who provided extremely valuable assistance in the development of ideas and editing my drafts, as well as giving me constructive advice on how to improve the language of this thesis.
Finally, much thanks to Anna Hellstrand who helped me together with students from the Master Program in Ethnic and Migration Studies at Linköping University who helped with my son and made my study time more focused.
Abstract
The study sought to understand the labour-market experiences of Kenyan women living in Sweden from a precarity standpoint. Specifically, from the point of view of uncertainty and vulnerability of African migrants workers in the labor market. The research explored how individual, structural, and cultural factors influenced the choice of profession and the labour market participation of Kenyan migrant women in Sweden. Intersectionality, Precarity and the Dual Labor Market theory were the theories picked to make sense of the particular vulnerabilities experienced, and strategies adopted by Kenya migrant women in the Swedish labour market. A qualitative approach was adopted by the study and a case-study specifically used. Semi -structured interviews were used as the tool for data collection and the data coded and analyses thematically. The research found out that African woken faced challenges in the Swedish labour market despite their academic qualifications, work experience or Swedish language skills. Gender and ethnicity were found to be contributing factors to these women being embedded mostly in the secondary segments of the labour market. Dualism or the labor market segmentation theory- divided into two sections; the primary and the secondary jobs proved useful as it enabled the research make sense of the participants embeddedness in the secondary labour markets. The concept of precarity was helpful in analysing various precarious work undertaken by the participants from the beginning of their migration to Sweden and after many years of being in the country. The combination of the dual labor market theory with the intersectionality approach was significant to the study as it highlighted the dichotomy and the complexity of interactions between race, gender and ethnicity in the labor market. The findings of the research generally confirmed previous studies that show that highly skilled migrant women are mostly situated in the secondary segments of the labour market or face discrimination when positioned in primary jobs due to their different ethnicity and different culture. The study recommends that further research be done with a a larger sample and the same study done in other European countries for comparison purposes.
Keys words; Labor market segmentation, migrant women, uncertainty, precarious work, highly skilled, intersectionality, dualism.
Content
CONTENT 3
INTRODUCTION 5
BACKGROUNDANDTHE CONTEXT 5
PROBLEM STATEMENT 8
AIMOFTHETHESIS & R ESEARCH PROBLEMANDQUESTIONS 9
RESEARCH QUESTIONS 9
THEOUTLINEOFTHETHESIS 10
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK 10
DUAL LABOR / LABORMARKETSEGMENTATION 10
PRECARISATION THEORY 16 3. INTERSECTIONALITY THEORY 24 PREVIOUS RESEARCH 26 METHODOLOGY 30 RESEARCH APPROACH 30 RESEARCH METHOD 31 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS 32
PRESENTATIONAND ANALYSIS OF DATA 33
DATA PRESENTATIONAND ANALYSIS APPROACH 33
INTRODUCINGTHE PARTICIPANTS. 34
KENYAN WOMENMIGRANTSAND LABOR MARKET. 37
LABORMARKETINEQUALITIES. 37
PRIMARYANDSECONDARYJOBS. 37
DEVALUATIONOF CREDENTIALS 38
INTERSECTIONALITYANDLABORMARKET 40
RACEANDGENDEROPPRESSIONS. 40
THEPROCESSOFINTEGRATION. 44
ECONOMICINTEGRATIONANDCULTURALBIASES. 44
SOCIALNETWORKS 47
CONSEQUENCESOFCAREERSTRAJECTORIES. 48
THEIMPORTANCEOFCHOICEOFPROFESSION/ ORHOWIMPORTANTIS THECAREER? 48
KENYANMIGRANTWORKERSPERCEPTIONSOFSKILLSANDQUALIFICATIONS 52
DISCUSSION, CONCLUSIONAND FUTURERESEARCH. 55
DISCUSSION 55
CONCLUSION 56
FURTHERRESEARCHONTHEFEMALEMIGRATION. 58
Introduction
Background and the Context
Globalization- the movement across and within borders, has led to enormous changes in multiple directions with migration being a key result. Discussions around migration have other the years gone beyond the push and pull factors and focused on the experiences of migrants during their journeys and in their countries of immigration. As such, discourses on migration have expanded to capture the nature of migration from the Global South to the Global North and vice versa, the different flows of populations that migrate, such as students, workers or refugees, with the roles of class, region, nationality and religion in migration also emphasized by literature1.
According to the IOM- 2020 world migration report, there are 272 million estimated international migrants in the world currently with 164 million of them being workers 2. 47.9% of these migrants
are female. Developed countries in Asia and Latin America send the highest number of skilled migrants compared to Sub Saharan Africa and Latin America who sends a larger number of low skilled migrants. One explanation to this are the push factors specifically few employment opportunities in developing countries. It is estimated that demand for labour force in developed countries will increase from 2.4 billion in 2005 to 3 billion in 2020 and 3,6 billion in 2040. While in developing countries labor force will remain at 600 million between the above periods and 20503.
Another interesting feature to the migration phenomena is the gender dynamic which is central to this study. Narratives of women migrants in literature are complex with several factors both from the host and receiving countries playing a role. These factors from both the host and sending countries ultimately influence how women migrants use strategies to migrate and negotiate their opportunities or vulnerabilities through the migration process. The increase of uncertainties faced by women migrants’ workers and particularly in the changed economic and political situations is one of the key points that pushes me to do the study on female migrants.
In Europe, literature on migration dates back to the post war period and the importation of migrants from the global south as guest workers 4. Different waves of migrants have been witnessed in the
continent as a result of both pull and push factors and consequently literature has focused on both
1 Castles & Miller (1998); Portes & Dewind (2007); Faist, Fauser & Reisenauer (2013) Rs, Reshmi & jaleel, Abdul. (2012). p5
2 IOM (2020), World Migration Report. 3 Ibid., p 6 & 7
4Castles, S., & Miller, M. J. (1998). The Age of Migration. Macmillan Education . P 6-7
the social and economic integration of these immigrants. In Sweden for instance, migrants from Bosnia- Herzegovina who came to Sweden in the 1990s from former Yugoslavia were for a long time an interest to migration scholars specifically as regards the Swedish Model for integration of immigration.5 Their economic and political integration was of interest not only academically but at
the policy level. Over the years, such studies on immigrant integration have informed policy at the socio-economic, legal, cultural and political levels.
However, I agree on the subjectives dimensions which is to study migrants’ experiences, narratives, strategies and social interactions through their participations in everyday social practices. These attributes are crucial for the contribution to the integration policies which enables recognizing migrants’ skills and migrants as social actors 6. This study focuses on Kenya female labour migrants
. The objective is to examine the processes, outcomes and problems associated with the migration of Kenyan women workers at the Swedish labor market.
Statistics Kenyan Women In Sweden. Figure 1.
Fig 17. According to Figure 1, the number of Kenyan Women who are not born in Sweden are 2794
and men, 2048 until December 2019. In the figure, it is mentioned that the statistics belong to Kenyan women and men who have two parents born in Sweden or one parent born in Sweden. This study is however limited to Kenyan women living in Sweden but not born in Sweden, the statistics relevant for this study are the number of Kenyans women born abroad living in Sweden and their educational qualifications.
Immigrants 16-74 years of age by sex, national background, level of education, field of education SUN 2000, latest country of residence and year. Figure 2.
5Bennich-Björkman, Li & Kostic, Roland. (2016). Citizens at Heart? Perspectives on integration of refugees in the EU after the Yugoslav wars of succession. P. 87
6 Ibid., P 90.
7http://www.statistikdatabasen.scb.se/pxweb/en/ssd/START__BE__BE0101__BE0101E/FodelselandArK/table/tableVi
ewLayout1/
Kenyan Women born abroad 2019
Primary and Lower Secondary Education
0+1+2+8 general education, teaching, humanities and services 47
3 social sciences, law, commerce, administration 0
4+5+6 science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture 0
health care and nursing, social care 0
Upper Secondary Education
0+1+2+8 general education, teaching, humanities and services 20
3 social sciences, law, commerce, administration 2
4+5+6 science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture 1
7 health care and nursing, social care 4
Post-secondary education, less than 3 years (ISCED97 4+5B)
0+1+2+8 general education, teaching, humanities and services 5
3 social sciences, law, commerce, administration 4
4+5+6 science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture 0
7 health care and nursing, social care 1
Post-secondary education 3 years or more (ISCED97 5A)
0+1+2+8 general education, teaching, humanities and services 2
3 social sciences, law, commerce, administration 14
4+5+6 science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture 5
7 health care and nursing, social care 5
Post-graduate Education (ISCED97 6)
0+1+2+8 general education, teaching, humanities and services 0
3 social sciences, law, commerce, administration 0
4+5+6 science, technology, manufacturing, agriculture 0
7 health care and nursing, social care 0
“In the Swedish Register of Education 2017, the annual survey “Education in a country other than
Sweden” has been sent only to immigrants during the last year who don't have information on
educational attainment registered at the Swedish public employment service. The highest level of
education registered at the source “Swedish public employment service” is “post-secondary
education less than 3 years”. Fig 2.
Statistics from Figure 2 will be an interesting comparison to the participants interviewed backgrounds and experiences at the Swedish labor market.
Problem Statement
Using the case of Kenyan women living in Sweden, I seek to explore the labour-market experiences of African migrant women from a deskilling standpoint. Research points to gaps between immigrants and native-born outcomes in the Swedish labour-market with immigrant women found to not only have lower labour-market participation rates compared to the natives but also positioned in lower jobs strata that they are overqualified for 8. In recent years, there has been an emerging
literature on immigrant women who are highly educated and skilled professionals. 9These studies
found that many middle-class immigrant women encountered difficulties in finding employment commensurate with their qualifications in their new countries in the Global North.
Literature on migration in Europe has so far failed to address gender-specific migration experiences
10.Specifically, there is an absence of a robust debate on the gender aspect of African immigrants
within the Swedish literature. Existing literature is hugely quantitative in nature and has been conducted on the comparison of the labour-market outgrowth and how the economic integration of immigrants is controlled by different aspects such as ‘status, education, occupation, languages skills and age’11. However, there is still a gap as regards gendered experiences among especially African
women immigrants.
Aim of the thesis & Research Problem and questions
The thesis aims to understand labour-market experiences of Kenyan women living in Sweden from a deskilling standpoint. The narrow research on female migration is a result of limited literature in the subject in comparison to literature on male migration or migrants’ labour-market participation in general in Sweden12.
8 Neuman 2017 Emma Neuman - Source country culture and labour-market assimilation of immigrant women in Sweden: evidence from longitudinal data Rev Econ Household (2018) 16:585–627. P 601.
9Man, 2004 Guida Man- Gender, work and migration: Deskilling Chinese immigrant women in Canada Women’s Studies International Forum 27 (2004) 135–148. P 135.
10Kofman, Eleonore. “Female 'Birds of Passage' a Decade Later: Gender and Immigration in the European Union.” The
International Migration Review, vol. 33, no. 2, 1999, pp. 269–299. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/2547698. Accessed 10
Mar. 2020. P 270
11 Creese, Gillian & Wiebe, Brandy. (2009). ‘Survival Employment’: Gender and Deskilling among African Immigrants in Canada. P 57.
12 Ibid.
Research Questions
● What roles do Kenyan women participating in the Swedish labour market take up at work? ● To what extent are these roles in line with their skills and educational qualifications?
● How to Kenyan women perceive their labour market roles in terms of race, ethnicity and gender?
The outline of the thesis
Chapter One, which is the introduction, will provide a background of labour market dynamics in Europe and Sweden at the backdrop of gender and ethnicity. Statics on these dynamics will be presented. This will be followed by a problem statement research questions, then justification/rationale of the study.
Chapter Two will look at theoretical and empirical literature. Specifically, the labour market segmentation/dual labour market concept, precarisation concept and intersectionality will be the theories looked at. This will be followed by looking at empirical literature on highly skilled immigrants (both man and women) in western labour markets in general, then Swedish labour market in particular. Literature on immigrant women in western/Swedish labour markets (regardless of skill level) will be presented next and finally, focus on highly skilled women in EU in general and Sweden in particular.
Chapter Three will highlight the qualitative approach and specifically the case study method as a choice for this study. Thematic analysis as an approach for data analysis will follow and finally ethical consideration and the trustworthiness is discussed.
Chapter Four will consist of verbatim presentation of interviews and the analysis of these at the backdrop of theoretical concepts picked for the thesis and previous research. Finally, Chapter Five will provide a conclusion and recommendation for future research.
Theoretical Framework
Dual Labor / Labor market segmentation
The dual labor market hypothesis can be traced back to the United States in the middle 1960s where it was used to explain the situation of black workers in Northern central cities and has since been extended to account for the predicaments of other disadvantaged and underprivileged groups in
different national contexts. 13 The theory has its roots on the precariousness of economic systems
and in the uneven impact of this on different groups of workers, and dates back to the Industrial Revolution era. Classical political economists like Smith, Fergusson and Marx highlighted the increased division of labour, specifically- the continual subdivision of manual tasks as the main source of increased productivity in factories. This division of labour according to theorists, increased efficiency, consequently lowering production costs, and bringing goods within the reach of those previously unable to afford them. 14Historically, the labor force has been used to resolve the
problems which these economies generate for the productive process.
At the backdrop of increased productivity, and, as a result of mass production of goods, the Post-World War II era saw the emergence of large firms which not only controlled the price and quantity of their output but also the stability and uncertainty of demand and, the capital required for production.15Averitt16 argues that such firms are only one sector of a dual economy. He terms that
sector the center. The other sector, which Averitt terms the periphery, is composed of smaller firms tightly constrained by the market that determines their decisions about price, quantity, and capital investments. The former consists of large corporations with higher profit rates and a unionised workforce with the later consisting of struggling firms with marginal profits mostly run by families. The existence of peripheral firms was sustained by the core firms because among many other reasons, the center firms can go around union problems and avoid paying employee fringe benefits by indirectly employing peripheral workers17. Core to the dualist argument is that small businesses,
however weak and deficient have survived because they perform a variety of functions essential to the political economy of capitalism. 18 As Goldthorpe puts it, ‘the logic of capitalism has required,
as the counterpart to the evolving mainstream or primary labour force, the creation of a further body of labour that is still capable of being treated essentially as a commodity’ 19Peripheral workers can
be freely manipulated, hired or fired based on the productivity of a firm unlike capital with labor
13 Berger, S. and Piore, M.J., (1980) Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies, Cambridge University Press . P 15. 14Michael J. Piore & Charles F. Sabel (1984), The Second Industrial Divide - Possibilities for Prosperity, Basic Books. P 28
15Piore, Michael J. (1973) “ The Technology Foundations of economics dualism” Number 110. P. 2
16
Ibid.17Gordon, D.M., Edwards, R. and Reich, M., (1982) Segmented Work. Divided Workers - The Historical Transformation of Labor in The United States, Cambridge University Press
18 Linda Weiss (1988) Creating Capitalism: The State and Small Business since 1945, Basil Blackwell . P 17
19Goldthorpe, J. (1984):'' The end of convergence corporatist and dualist tendencies in modern western societies”, In J. Goldthorpe (ed.) order and conflict in Westerb European Capitalism. Oxford University press. Pp. 315-343. P 335.
force is usually left to adjust to many aspects of the economic system rather than the other way around.
Piore in the same onus views, dualism in the dual labour market as the outgrowth of various reasons key among them: a dichotomy in large and small firms respectively termed core and periphery enterprises; a dichotomy in sectors of the economy often characterized as organized and informal sectors; and the stratified structure of the labour market composed of the primary and secondary sectors with these further divided into professional managerial positions and blue collar jobs.20
Dualism in the labour market further occurs when portions of the labour force begin to be treated like capital and the needs of this group anticipated and factored in during the planning process. 21
Investing in employee training for instance makes employees “quasi-fixed factor” of production or quasi capital as the training maximizes production.
Further efforts of certain working groups to escape their position as a residual factor and to secure their jobs through trade unions have made them indispensable and therefore part of organizations’ planning process ensuring stable wages and employment. This group of workers consequently, shares privileges initially only set aside for capital. Duality however presents itself as a result of employers’ effort to divide what would otherwise be a united working class by ensuring some workers continue to function as the residual factor of production in secondary sectors primarily unprotected by labour unions and with temporary jobs and low wages. This is in line with the interests in the dual labor market- a distinction between privileged and underprivileged positions in the socioeconomic structure22.
The dual market theory tries to explain that the underprivileged positions in the labour market’s secondary sector are concentrated among certain groups of workers rather than others with migrants (foreign and domestic), rural workers, and women specifically embedded in these sectors 23. This
forms an important part of the analysis aimed an understanding the nature of both the advantaged and disadvantaged workers and the demand side of the market. It has been theorized i.e. by the human capital theory that the “trainability” of different groups of workers and their stability, or attachment to the enterprise, once trained determines their position in the dual labour market. Further, the political and economic power of various different groups of workers have been used to explain this duality with the secondary workers considered economically and politically weak. It
20 Michael J. Piore (1980) The Technological Foundations of Dualism and Discontinuity. P. 18 21 Ibid.
22 Ibid. 23 Ibid.
has been postulated that married women, youth, and temporary migrants have a preference of temporary work and other non-work-related interests in contrast to primary wage earners making them favourable to employers.
The weak job attachment by the afore mentioned secondary workers has been argued to be the product of the economic and political system by some theorists and in contrast to be largely exogenous factors by others. Berger24 leaning on the latter school of thought terms the secondary
workers as largely accidents which the economic system makes use of but which it does not necessarily create. In the former view, gender, racism, ethnicity and youth, are categories which, if not fully created by employers, have at the very least been largely enabled and manipulated by them in order to stabilize and legitimize the economic structure.25
Berger posits that this phenomenon is a result of politics rather than the economy evidenced by the presence of duality in different countries with different economic systems i.e. France and Italy over the years.26 She further posits that the functions that dualism performs in the maintenance of
political stability and social order provide many reasons for the decisions and policies that work to reproduce it. As such, the capitalism inherent in dual labour markets exploits, preserves, and recreates them political structures that are already in place and not the other way round. The nature of capitalism according to Berger “is not to create a homogeneous world social and economic system, but rather to dominate and to draw profit from the diversity and inequality that remain in permanence.”27Put this way, the state is conceived of as the arm of the dominant economic groups.
This is in line with Weiss’ study on the state and small business since 1945, 28which found the state
as simply not supporting capital accumulation in an undifferentiated way. Rather states actively channel and mould economic activity into particular forms in relation to capitalistic development. The study lends support to research that depicts states, past and present, as weighty actors in economic and social development.
Berger further argues that social and economic theories are incapable of explaining the entire range of phenomena that derives from the heterogeneity of labour markets rooted in race, region, ethnicity, and language making it hard to evaluate their importance. She opines that the visibility and intelligibility of segmented labour markets requires for the society and the discontinuities and
24 Suzanne Berger (1980) The Traditional Sector in France and Italy 25 Michael J. Piore (1980) Dualism as a Response to Flux and Uncertainty 26 Suzanne Berger (1980) The Traditional Sector in France and Italy 27 Suzanne Berger (1980) Discontinuity in The Politics of Industrial Society
28 Linda Weiss (1988) Creating Capitalism: The State and Small Business since 1945, Basil Blackwell
heterogeneity within it, in the forms of economic and social organization and values be regarded as permanent and not transient. This is because the segments coexist on a permanent basis and fundamentally different from the institutions whose activities, values, and structures produce them. This is in line with Piore’s models of labor market dualism which emphasizes the significance and permanence of social segmentation and the need to explore the mutually dependent relationship between the segments.
Weiss similarly argues that the forms of dualism existing in labour markets can be supplied and sustained by race, ethnicity or sex roles. The form that prevails in a particular political setting depends on the resources that nationally specific histories have bequeathed. Thus, the structures that distribute risk in one political context may rely primarily on a distinction between large and small firms in another; the divisions between workers between native and foreign or black and white in another. In all cases, however, the result will be to render permanent the ‘traditional’ cleavages, institutions and practices that were supposed to disappear according to convectional economic and social theories. 29
Understanding the phenomenon of labour market segmentation thus warrants the breakdown of fore mentioned ortothodox theories which forcasted that labour market divisions amongst different groups will decrease over time. The division howevor still exists in the current market economy and are ”distinguished by different characteristics and behavioural rules.”30 This includes: the
segmentation into primary and secondary sectors ; segmentation within the primary sector; segmentation by race; and lastly segmentation by sex. Reich et al in line with Piore 31posit that the
segmentation into Primary and secondary sectors have resulted in primary jobs being more stable than the secondary jobs with training and high wages being standard for this sector. Secondary jobs often occupied by women, minority and youths, had low wages and limited fringe benefits and job security32. The behavioral elements of workers and employers in the secondary sectors have been
blamed for these precarity33.
29 Ibid.
30 Reich, M., Gordon, D., & Edwards, R. (1973). Dual Labor Markets: A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation. The
American Economic Review, 63(2), 359-365. P 359.
31 Michael J. Piore (1980) The Technological Foundations of Dualism and Discontinuity. P 17
32 Reich, M., Gordon, D., & Edwards, R. (1973). Dual Labor Markets: A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation. The American Economic Review, 63(2), 359-365. P 359.
33 Piore Michael J. Dualism in the Labor Market : A Response to Uncertainty and Flux. The Case of France. In: Revue économique, volume 29, n°1, 1978. pp. 26-48. P 27.
The segmentation of the labor market like in the past where white-collar workers employment terms were different from the blue-collar workers stand. Even though the unions back then were present to help legitimize the internal market, employers could still exploit and discriminate workers by race, gender or ethnic while blind folding unions. For instance, during the steel strike in 1909 in the US, roughly 30 to 40.000 black workers were imported as “strikebreakers” and jobs were created for only women in order to be less suspicious from the unions 34. As regards segmentation within the
primary sector,there exists “subordinate” and “independent” primary jobs. Factory and office jobs are considered subordinate and characterised by discipline and a good response to rules and authorities. Independent jobs on the other hand are characterised by creativity, problem solving and a higher individual motivation35.
Segmentation by race constitutes minority workers located both in the primary and secondary sectors of the dual labour market, who both face discrimination and segregation as a result of their race. Segmentation by sex constitutes job being assigned to individuals based on their gender with female workers having low wages attributed to their “serving mentality” 36. As discussed earlier,
segmentation has evolved into labour market institutions such as temporary jobs or permanent jobs, formal or informal jobs and different workers from various groups within the labour market segmentation. More explicitly, labour market segmentation shows migrants workers' chances of getting work depending not only on their human capital but also on gender, race, ethnicity, legal status, age, location, and other social aspects.
The origins of the dual labor market derived from The United states of America around the 1960s to tackle the issue of black workers in Northern central cities. The concept has been used since then to emphasize different sorts of disadvantaged and underprivileged workers at the labor markets 37. The
origins of the dual labor market was to underline the employment opportunities and differences between White and Black workers and they are perceived in the structure of the labor market. Accordingly, dualism theory or concept does not only capture the ambivalences at the labor market in relation to wage aspects, education or training but on ethnicity and race38.
34 Ibid.,p 361-362
35 Reich, M., Gordon, D., & Edwards, R. (1973).Dual Labor Markets; A Theory of Labor Market Segmentation. The
American Economic Review, 63(2),, 359-365.P 360.
36 Ibid.
37 Suzanne. B & Michael. J. P (1980),Dualism and Discontinuity in Industrial Societies, Cambridge University Press. P 15. 38 Ibid., p 17.
Recently, a debate on deskilling of immigrants and a study on explanation on the devaluation has been relatively discussed, especially in the research of the author Harald Bauder. The main approach expectation was” that the non-Europeans immigrants’ workers are excluded being hired in the upper segment labor market in the privilege of reserving those work for Canadians born and Canadians natives”39. Piore sought to explain why immigrants are often concentrated in semiskilled,
repetitive jobs with limited job security; why the wages in such jobs rarely rise but frequently fall; and why migrants take work of low social status. The strength of his analysis is that he recognizes that work is more than a set of job tasks in that it also marks the social status of the worker and this helps explain why native-born workers often resist taking menial, service sector jobs.40 The most
striking feature of Piore’s theory is its understanding that international migration is not caused by push factors, such as low wages or unemployment rather is a result of the inbuilt demand for certain kinds of disposable labour that is an inherent feature of advanced industrial economies.41
Precarisation Theory
The etymology of the word precarity can be traced back to Bourdieu’s theoretical work on colonial Algeria in the 1960’s where he referred to the disadvantaged colonial subject as the “precarité” 42.
At its most elemental level, precarity can be understood as conjuring life worlds that are inflected with uncertainty instability and consequently vulnerability 43. The focus here is primarily on people
who are reckoned to be at risk of being hurt, damaged and discriminated against- those on the periphery of mainstream social life, otherwise considered ‘outsiders’ or ‘scapegoats. 44According to
Philo45 and in line with dual labour market theories, these kinds of vulnerabilities are not just
there-in-the-world – a somehow natural, accidental and innocent condition but to an extent made for certain peoples and places and caused by the acts of others in varied ways.
Precarity as conceptualized by Tsianos and Papadopoulos this form of exploitation that is not only material but embodied and characterised by: vulnerability which is the steadily experience of flexibility without any form of protection; hyperactivity which is the imperative to accommodate
39 Bauder, H. (2003). “Brain Abuse”, or the Devaluation of Immigrant Labour in Canada. Antipode, 35(4). P 699. 40 Piore 1979
41 Ibid.
42 Schierup, C.-U., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2016). An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences. Critical Sociology, 42(7–8), 947–958. P 948.
43 Louise Waite (2009) A Place and Space for a Critical Geography of Precarity?, Geography Compass 3/1: 412–433, 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2008.00184.x
44 Chris Philo (2005) The Geographies that Wound;, Population, Space And Place 11, 441–454 (2005) P. 442 45 Ibid.
constant availability; fluid intimacies which is the bodily production of indeterminate gender relations; unsettledness which is the continuous experience of mobility across different spaces and time lines; affective exhaustion which is emotional exploitation, or, emotion as an important element for the control of employability46.
Historically, the era of precarious work began in the mid- to late-1970s in the United States where neoliberal globalization provided greater opportunities to outsource work to lower-wage countries and opened up new labor pools through immigration. Technological advances within this era both forced companies to become more competitive globally and made it possible for them to do so. This period also saw the decline of unions and deregulation with the balance of power shifting all the more heavily away from workers and toward employers.47 This period and phenomenon is termed
Fordism as it was greatly advanced in the United States within the Ford Company.
This neoliberal revolution spread globally seeing the privatization of government resources, and removal of government protection. Currently, economies all over the world face pressures from globalization and post-fordist restructuring with societies in Western Europe confronted with market-driven forms of capitalism characterised by the increase in insecure, unprotected modes of employment which do not guarantee long-term wellbeing. 48The post-Fordist employment societies
are more and more divided into three “zones”. The “zone of disaffiliation”, containing all the long-term unemployed. The “zone of integration” consists of the regularly, full-time employed. In between these extremes is a growing “zone of precariousness” with heterogeneous employment modes like temporary work, fixed-t contract work, forced part-time work, little jobs, badly paid jobs and unpaid practical trainees. What these jobs share is precarity as they do not provide long term security49.
Currently, the increase in immigration due to globalization and the reduction of barriers to the movement of people across national borders has produced a greater surplus of labor today resulting in precarity of migrant workers 50 . This renders valid that assertion by Samuel Gompers- a US
46Vassilis Tsianos / Dimitris Papadopoulos (2006) - Precarity: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Embodied Capitalism. P 2
47 Kalleberg, Arne L. (2008), "Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition", American Sociological Review 74 (Feb.):1-22.
48Klaus Dörre, Klaus Kraemer, and Frederic Speidel (2006) The increasing precariousness of the employment society – driving force for a new rightwing populism?; Recklinghausen, Paper prepared for presentation at the 15th Conference of Europeanists Chicago, March 30 – April 2, 2006. P 99
49Ibid.
50 Kalleberg, Arne L. (2008), "Precarious Work, Insecure Workers: Employment Relations in Transition", American Sociological Review 74 (Feb.):1-22. P 3 _4.
labour leader, that immigration is fundamentally a labour problem 51. In the same onus, McGovern
argues that immigration brings the institutional nature of labour markets into light as it exposes, among other things, the influence of the nation state, processes of labour market segmentation, and the role of trade union policy and practice52.
Theoretically, it has been suggested that immigrants are poor, have limited prospects in their country of origin, and so migrate to other countries where they may earn higher wages, even for relatively unskilled jobs as seen in the neoclassical economic model which assumed that migration is driven primarily by labour market mechanisms in a supply and demand manner and that, international migration should decline over the long term.53 Focusing on individual decision
making, George Borjas, introduced the concept of a global migration market in which rational
individuals calculate the relative costs and benefits of staying of finding employment abroad, consequently migrating to those places where the expected returns are greatest. 54Empirical findings
however negate these theoretical stances as most people do not migrate and international labour migration originates largely in countries where wages are some way above those of the lowest countries.55 Despite this evidence, state policies have largely based themselves on the neoclassical
economic model resulting in the patroling of borders and penalizing employers so as to reduce the flow of foreign labour, driving up the costs of entry and reducing the benefits of migration 56 . This
has however not stopped migrant from crossing borders and employers absorbing their labour. Instead migrant labour has been precarized. 57
Piore identifies three reasons why the demand for foreign-born workers is ‘chronic and unavoidable’58. They include the fact that (i)migration is a response to labour shortages during
periods of economic boom (ii) foreign labour stems from motivation effects of hierarchy in that, people do not only work for money but the social status it accords them, (iii) the inherent duality
51 (Gompers 1925: 157)…
52 McGovern, Patrick (2007), "Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects", British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2):217-235.
53 Ibid.
54Borjas, G. (2014). The Economic Benefits from Immigration. In Immigration Economics (pp. 149-169). Harvard University Press. P 153
55 McGovern, Patrick (2007), "Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects", British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2):217-235. P 225-226
56 Massey et al. 1998: 288–89)… (221)
57 McGovern, Patrick (2007), "Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects", British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2):217-235. P 225-226
58 Piore 1979: 26–43
between labour and capital. This dualism creates a division in the labour force between those who work in the capital-intensive primary sector and those who are employed in the labour-intensive secondary segment. The former enjoy secure jobs while the latter, who are more disposable, have poor wages and conditions. Accordingly, immigrants are concentrated in the secondary sector.
Based on the above theoretical grounding, McGovern in conceptualising precarity advocates for a combination of institutional economists’ focus on the demand side with the sociologists’ interest in processes of occupational segregation on the supply side 59. He posits that the first source of labour
segregation is based on race/ethnic conscious employment where employers allocate jobs to worker not purely on the basis of aptitude, skill or experience but according to how their racial or ethnic grouping are ranked in the wider society. The second major source of segregation stems from the use of social networks to fill jobs and the final mechanism concerns the acquisition of skills or knowledge on the job with the exercise considered easier when employees share social ties, such as race or ethnicity. Consequently, immigrants find themselves left outside the mainstream job market. McGovern further argues that trade unions in the same onus view immigrants as highly individualistic and motivated by money, consequently willing to accept low wages, thus making them difficult to unionize. Unions, therefore, fear that admitting large numbers of migrants will undermine their bargaining power and divide the working class by exerting a downward pressure on wages. Consequently, trade unions over the years have been among those who are leading calls for a restriction on immigration rendering migrant workers in precarious positions in the labour markets.60As such, migrant workers are hired on demand, exploited at will, fired at whim, excluded
from most kinds of public welfare and social security, and hence unable to make plans for the future.61
As precariats, migrants fair differently based on intertwining variables that include country of origin, differential immigration statuses and entitlements and rights inherent in them, different gender and age profiles, human capital, divergent labour market experiences and access to employment, locality, spatial distribution, transnationalism, and mixed local area responses by
59 McGovern, Patrick (2007), "Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects", British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2):217-235. P. 225-226.
60 Ibid.
61 Alex Foti (2005) - MAYDAY MAYDAY! euro flex workers, time to get a move on!
residents and service providers. 62 Undergirded by the above, precarity is embedded not simply
embedded in the workforce but the continuum of everyday life. 63
King and Reuder in theorizing precarity see economic security as the antithesis of precarity 64.
Economic security encompasses labour market security comprising of adequate income-earning opportunities; employment security comprising of protection against arbitrary dismissal, regulations on hiring and firing; job security comprising of opportunities for ‘upward’ mobility in terms of status and income; work security consisting of protection against accidents and illness at work; Income security comprising of adequate and stable income; and representation security accessed through independent trade unions, with a right to strike, etc. 65 If a person has no security, not only
will they be vulnerable, but this insecurity will induces adverse behavioural reactions earlier highlighted as being highly individualistic and motivated by money, consequently willing to accept low wages.
Whilst western Europe pre-globalisation era protected its workers from economic insecurity, this has gradually weakened in country after country favouring employers relative to workers consequently resulting in the systemic insecurity of workers. This systematic insecurity according to King and Rueda has led to Casualisation, Contractualisation and Informalisation. 66
Informalisation having precedence in Latin America and South Asia has spread to industrialized countries in the globalization era, takes the form of firms informalising their employment by turning to sub-contractors, outworkers and the use of illegal forms of labour, to avoid tax and social contributions. Casualisation on the other hand is more specific and refers to a shift from regular, quasi-permanent employment to the use of workers in short-term employment arrangements. Finally, contractualisation refers to the global trend towards individualized labour contracts with the aim of minimising employers’ uncertainty and maximizing their capacity to impose penalties on the employee in the case of their abrogation of the terms of the labour agreement. 67
Informalisation, causalisation and contractualisation affect immigrants disproportionately compared to natives because a majority of immigrant workers hold jobs that are either illegal or nor fully protected with cheap labour. King and Rueda’s analytical point of departure in defining cheap labor
62 Vertovec, Steven(2007)'Super-diversity and its implications', Ethnic and Racial Studies,30:6,1024 — 1054
63 Vassilis Tsianos / Dimitris Papadopoulos (2006) - Precarity: A Savage Journey to the Heart of Embodied Capitalism 64 Desmond King and David Rueda (2008) Cheap Labor: The New Politics of “Bread and Roses” in Industrial Democracies; - Perspectives on Politics, June 2008 | Vol. 6/No. 2. P 280
65 Ibid. 66 ibid 67 Ibid.
is to divide workers into insiders and outsiders, the former defined as those workers occupying highly protected jobs and the latter as a group of workers who are either unemployed or precariously employed. Immigrants are considered “outsiders” to based on the fact that they experience low levels of pay; low levels of employment protection, if any; and low levels of benefits, if any. This is attributed to migrants’ political alienation, migrant’s loose identity within occupations as witnesses by their high turnover between jobs. They thus form their ties in terms of immigrant community networks, articulating political consciousness and action about immigrant rights rather than class-based issues. Finally, social democratic and labor parties who define themselves historically as representatives of the least well off in society have chosen to advance the interests of insiders in standard employment, and deliberately neglected the concerns of the outsiders. 68
From the above theoretical discussion, it can be concluded that precarious work is not only the results of capitalism but also the new liberal policies which lack the will to protect workers as a result of the competitiveness at the labor market 69. Even though there has been an awareness of the
concept of precarity in the academic literature, there has been less attention on the role of migration recruiters, brokers or “labor market intermediaries” in perpetuating precarious work and creating more of the precarity environments among migrant workers. Recruitment agencies and labor supply intermediaries are mostly in the construction sectors where subcontracting and temporary work are sustained and exploited for the profit70. Migrants workers are willing to accept precarious work and
put their qualifications aside and accept work that requires low or no-qualifications with a higher risk of accidents, or low-wages or even a risk of deportation 71. Accepting low-skilled work and the
risks of the lack of legal and social rights makes the migrant workers vulnerable in the labor markets72. The lack of rights has been reported as illustrated in the number of cases where the
68 Ibid.
69 Matias, G., Silva, G., & Farago, F. (2020). Precarization of Work and Migration: A Review of the International Literature. Internext, 15(1), 19-36. P 29.
70 Baey, G., & Yeoh, B. S. A. (2018). “The lottery of my life”: Migration trajectories and the production of precarity among Bangladeshi migrant workers in Singapore’s construction industry. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 27(3), 249–272. P. 254.
71 Matias, G., Silva, G., & Farago, F. (2020). Precarization of Work and Migration: A Review of the International Literature. Internext, 15(1), 19-36. P 29.
72Deshingkar, P., Abrar, C. R., Sultana, T. M., Haque, H. N. K., and Reza, M. S. (2018) ‘Producing ideal Bangladeshi migrants for precarious construction work in Qatar’, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. P.5
employers or recruitment Agency holds the salary and even the passports of theur migrant employees73.
Informal economies characterised by subcontracting, temporary work, and casualization have been assessed by the International Labour organisation (ILO). Informal economy is defined as all income earning activities that are not regulated or secured by the state in social environments where similar activities are regulated74. Informal employment from below are constituted by the enlargement of
self-employment and low-income earners, low wage paid, legal and illegal immigrant with a lack of legal protections in the labor market75. This has been defined as” flexploitation”76.
The lack of legal protection in the labor markets, the legitimation of the precarisation of insecurity and vulnerabilities and informality in the workplace in the liberal democratic states of the Global North are explained as a “continuum of dependence” across various sorts of temporary work and contractual work77. This work relationship has been identified as“Hyper-dependence” and
“Hyper-precarity”. Hyper dependence refers to an economic dependence from the employer and hyper precarity refers to the short-term employment, vulnerability and insecurities at the labor market78. This further explains the relationship between employers, recruitment agencies and
migrant workers especially in the constructions sectors as previously discussed. In this research it will be interesting to study if there is this economic dependence and insecurities at work for Kenyan women migrants at the workplace and how the concept of precariousness intersects with gender and race.
Gender and Precarisation
The uncertainty, vulnerabilities, lack of protections and the precarious environments that migrant workers experienced are characterized by sex roles with females disadvantaged in comparison to
73Ray Jureidini; International Labour Migration, International Migration Papers 48, Women Migrant Domestic workers in Lebanon. P. 6
74 Ibid.,p 5 75 Ibid.,p 4
76 Schierup, C.-U., & Jørgensen, M. B. (2016). An Introduction to the Special Issue. Politics of Precarity: Migrant Conditions, Struggles and Experiences. Critical Sociology, 42(7–8), 947–958. P. 949
77Zou, Mimi, The Legal Construction of Hyper-Dependence and Hyper-Precarity in Migrant Work Relations (June 12, 2015). International Journal of Comparative Labour Law and Industrial Relations, Vol 31 (2), pp.141-162. P 144. 78 Ibid., p 144-145.
the male gender79. The differentiation based on gender remains important. While female migrants
have high educational qualifications or professional qualifications, they still occupy various precarious forms of work and are low-paid. Competency, professional experiences and educational level for migrants are not considered. With the issues of public policies and migration policies failing to protect migrants 80. This accentuates the need of more research regarding migrant women
workers in general in European countries in Academic literature. Precarity, precariousness, feminization of work in relation to migration process, mobilities and immobilities has been conceptualized by Mcllwaine 81 in her research on Latin America's migrants’ women moving from
Southern Europe to London. She stresses the importance and the ambivalence using the concept of “feminized onward precarity”.In line with feminist scholars, she accentuates how labor markets have been feminized in relations to neo liberalism. Precariousness here reinforces the uncertainty and vulnerabilities at the labor market especially when female migrant workers have an insecure immigration status. This enables sexism, racism and other forms of discriminations to takes place and produce “hyper- precarity”82.
Mcllwaine highlights how on gender and precarity align in feminized work occupations such as domestic and care work. These feminized precarious works have exploitative working conditions undergirded by a colonial legacy. As such, migrant women are forced to work in precarious work created by colonization processes83. Her concept of “feminized onward precarity” beyond
highlighting feminized work occupations and the devaluation and insecurity of working conditions, explain how migrants at multiple times move across borders, negotiate their inequalities- across time and during migration processes in relation to gender, race, nationality, class and sexuality84.
The concept of “care drain” developed by Hochschild is also closely ties to precarity and the feminisation of migration. “Care drain” is the opposite of the conception of “brain drain” which sees well-paid migrants as an economic reduction from the sending countries 85. “Care drain” is 79 Precarization of Work and Migration: A Review of the International Literature. Internext, 15(1), 19-36. P 21
80 Ibid.,p 22
81Cathy McIlwaine (2020): Feminized precarity among onward migrants
in Europe: reflections from Latin Americans in London, Ethnic and Racial Studies. P 2&3. 82 Ibid., p 3
83 Ibid.,p 12 84 Ibid.,p 5
85 Dumitru, S. (2014) ‘From ‘brain drain’ to ‘care drain’: Women’s labor migration and
used to describe women migrant workers only as domestic workers and not taking into consideration women's education background, or the economic benefits women migrants families receive86. Hochschild underlines the important subject which is how care work is specifically linked
to a specific group- women. This specifies a decrease of the value of this such of domestic work and the wages are not raised87. The gender inequality in precarious work is significantly high especially
in domestic work where women are concentrated in temporary and low productivity work. This gender precarity creates a high level of male versus female discrepancy.
3. Intersectionality Theory
The theory picked to guide the research is Intersectionality Theory. This section is aimed at discussing intersectionality theory from a methodological perspective and the way to apply it to the study of social phenomena whether there is deskilling or not of female migrants in Sweden. I will address the main weakness and the main strength of the intersectionality theory and will try to define the theory and apply it to my research study.
Intersectionality theory aims to define and conceptualize the background of several discriminations or systems of inequality as a result of one’s gender and pointing on the consequences of this and providing tools for further investigations88. One could argue that intersectionality is an important
theoretical tool that women’s studies, in conjunction with related fields, has made so far. Intersectionality was introduced first by Crenshaw. As a legal feminist, Crenshaw elaborates a theory which enables to analyses black women’s experiences. She argues that it is not sufficient to not only look into one single perspective of the traditional classifications such race and gender but continuously look into various ways of how gender and race intersect with things like class, age, ability to produce disadvantage 89.
The concept of intersectionality has been explained by Crenshaw using metaphors;
“Discrimination, like traffic through an intersection, may flow in one direction, and it
may flow in another. If an accident happens in an intersection, it can be caused by
methodological sexism’, Women’s Studies International Forum, 47, 203-212. P. 204 86 Ibid., P. 205.
87 Ibid., P. 208.
88 Sue Nichols & Garth Stahl (2019): Intersectionality in higher education
research: a systematic literature review, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2019.1638348. P 1244.
89Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6). P. 1
cars traveling from any number of directions and, sometimes, from all of them.
Similarly, if a Black woman is harmed because she is in the intersection, her injury
could result from sex discrimination or race discrimination”90.
Crenshaw argues that it is not sufficient to include black women and the discussions of racism and sexism without taking into account the intersectionality as a concept.
The author also highlights the importance of intersectionality as a methodology in a research too. Accordingly, feminist scholars have written widely on methodology but have failed to pinpoint the black women’s experiences and antiracist discourses91. Intersectionality has been used as an
analytical tool in various ranges of disciplines and studies such as ethnic studies, feminist studies, legal studies etc. The intersectionality nature is to investigate the complexity of differences and similarities regarding gender, race in different politics or academic discourses92. Quite
paradoxically, the concept or the term of intersectionality is outstanding when using the term as a ‘a way of thinking’, as an analytical tool rather than the term itself93.
Intersectionality as a theory, as a way of thinking or an analytical tool will help me to understand the phenomenon of Kenyans migrant women, labour-market experiences living in Sweden as it examines how race, class, gender and ethnicity co-exist and how they influence the structure of a social life. My analysis in this study will not only use the way of thinking of intersectionality but also will examine the concepts of inclusion and exclusion. Additionally, Kenyans migrant women’s labour-market experiences as a result of their intersecting identities will also be analyzed.94
Previous Research
There has been numerous research that addresses the labour market segmentation in terms of ethnicity, gender, age and ability. Castles for instance in discussing Migration and the global labour market highlights the effects of the neoliberal ideology on the global labour markets and how this
90 Crenshaw, K. W. (1989). Demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: A black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory, and antiracist politics. University of Chicago
Legal Forum, 14 P. 149. 91 Ibid., p 140.
92 Cho, S., Crenshaw, K. W., & McCall, L. (2013). Toward a field of intersectionality studies: Theory, applications, and praxis. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 38(4), 787–810. P. 787.
93 Ibid.,p 795
94 McGovern, Patrick (2007), "Immigration, Labour Markets and Employment Relations: Problems and Prospects",
British Journal of Industrial Relations 45 (2):217-235.
