"The Labour Market Consequences of Human Smuggling: ‘Illegal’ Employment in London's Migrant Economy" in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34: 6, 2008, 853-874.

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The Labour Market Consequences ofHuman Smuggling: ‘Illegal’ Employmentin London's Migrant EconomyDr Ali Nobil AhmadPublished online: 14 Jul 2008.

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The Labour Market Consequences ofHuman Smuggling: ‘Illegal’Employment in London’s MigrantEconomyAli Nobil Ahmad

This article explores the short- and medium-term labour market consequences of human

smuggling for migrants at destination within the context of Pakistani migration to

London. It questions the pessimistic picture painted in some recent academic and

journalistic accounts of the experience of ‘illegality’, and argues that the context of

reception does not necessarily make clear distinctions between so-called ‘legal’ and

‘illegal’ migrants. It also questions the wisdom of assuming that trafficking and

smuggling go hand-in-hand. Whilst harsh abuse by employers does indeed occur, this by

no means structures the totality of the irregular migrant’s experience. A more helpful

conceptual distinction, it is argued, can be made between ‘work’ and ‘jobs’*different

types of employment experienced by all migrant workers.

Keywords: Trafficking; Informal Economy; Human Smuggling; Illegal Work; Pakistanis;

London

Introduction

Despite exciting considerable academic interest since its emergence as an issue of

public concern within media and policy circles in the 1990s, human smuggling

remains a murky subject, mired in controversy as a consequence of its associations

with criminality, and beset with unanswered questions due to the difficulty of

gathering reliable empirical data. The difficulties in conceptualising its relation with

the associated phenomenon of trafficking (with which it is routinely conflated by

journalists and policy-makers) are well documented (Kyle and Koslowski 2001; Salt

Ali Nobil Ahmad recently received his doctorate from the European University Institute, Florence.

Correspondence to Dr A.N. Ahmad, 3 Lanchester Court, Seymour Street, London W2 2JQ. E-mail: ali.ahmad@

eui.eu

ISSN 1369-183X print/ISSN 1469-9451 online/08/060853-22 # 2008 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/13691830802211158

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies

Vol. 34, No. 6, August 2008, pp. 853�874

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and Hogarth 2000). A primary sticking-point continues to be whether it is

appropriate in analytical and/or practical terms to distinguish between ‘human

smuggling’ on the one hand, defined by the Vienna Protocols as the ‘procurement for

profit for illegal entry of a person into and/or illegal residence in a State of which the

person is not a national or permanent resident’, and, on the other hand, ‘trafficking in

persons’, which is specified as ‘the recruitment, transfer, harbouring or receipt of

persons, either by the threat or use of abduction, force, fraud, deception or

coercion . . .’ (Salt and Hogarth 2000: 153).

Some academics have questioned the theoretical usefulness of these legally

enshrined codes which guide existing policy at the international and national levels,

arguing that migrants who procure the services of human smugglers are frequently

subjected to violence, intimidation, debt bonds and other human rights abuses

(Skeldon 2000: 9). Others have claimed that the protocols serve the important

practical purpose of combating serious forms of trafficking by distinguishing them

from mere profiteering of the kind that is often involved in the facilitation of illegal

entry into a territory through border crossings and the like (Meese et al. 1998).

A recent issue of International Migration goes some way toward painting a more in-

depth and nuanced portrait of the realities involved in human smuggling, and makes

a strong case for it to be understood as distinct and autonomous from trafficking (see

Bliger et al. 2006; Liempt and Doomernik 2006; Neske 2006; Pastore et al. 2006).

What most of this body of work shares, however, is an exclusive focus on the

smuggling process through transit countries and across borders. Relatively little has

so far been said about what the socio-economic consequences of smuggling are for

migrants upon their arrival in destination countries in the short or medium term, an

oversight which segregates the smuggling debate from the insights of a vast body of

economic sociology on immigration and ethnic economies that has accumulated in

recent decades. The latter, for its part, has itself been slow to address the theoretical

question of smuggling and trafficking, despite the fact that many empirical studies

contain insights on matters relating to the employment experiences of irregular

migrants.1

The consequences of the gulf between these two bodies of work is that our

knowledge about the labour market experiences of smuggled migrants is patchy, and

often gets generalised on the basis of a handful of policy studies and press reports,

neither of which treat the context of reception as a potentially ‘normal’ labour market

(if anything, they tend to focus on extreme cases and abuses which compel public

attention or changes in the law). Recent academic research and investigative

journalism within the UK, for instance, would appear to confirm that ‘smuggling’

often leads to ‘trafficking’ (Anderson and Rogaly 2005; Lawrence 2005a, 2005b;

Shakhno 2004). It thereby implicitly re-opens the question of definitions and

problematises, once more, the analytical separation between smuggling and

trafficking posited in the late 1990s.

This paper makes an empirical contribution to this debate within the context of

Pakistani migration to London, and serves as a complement to the above-cited

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studies which focusn on the agricultural/horticultural, contract-cleaning and care

sectors. My conceptual starting-points are different, however: I treat the context of

reception as an ‘ethnic economy’ that contains a labour market with its own internal

dynamics, many of which serve to downplay the importance of the mode in which

migrants entered the UK, along with their legal residential status. My objectives are to

answer the following questions:

. In terms of labour market outcomes, what are the prospects of incorporation

within the context of reception for smuggled migrants and/or migrants in an

irregular situation, and how do these differ from migrants who are not smuggled

and/or who are legally resident?

. How widespread are abuses of the sort that recent academic and media reports

have highlighted, and how useful is it to distinguish between ‘smuggling’ and

‘trafficking’ when thinking about this particular migration system?

. How can we explain the structure of the labour market and the social relations

within it given that our answers to the above questions suggest that the reality

encountered does not accord fully with many of the assumptions that are

commonly made about smuggling and trafficking within the UK?

Before proceeding, it is necessary to say a word on the terminology in relation to

smuggling and irregularity. As Ghosh points out, the relation between different sorts

of irregularity and modes of entry is always complex: they are not mutually exclusive,

but nor does the existence of one imply that any of the others will necessarily follow.

Migrants may move from regularity to irregularity and vice versa over time (Ghosh

1998: 1�4). The term irregularity (used synonymously, in this article, with illegality),

thus refers to a status into and out of which individual migrants can move over time

throughout the migration process; it can, of course, occur at the sending context if

the bureaucratic procedures stipulated as necessary by the sending state in order to

emigrate are not respected.

As the above-listed objectives suggest, this paper examines the plight of smuggled

migrants within the broader context of all migrant workers within the context of

reception at destination. Of those who are ‘irregular’ within this wider group, not all

are smuggled. Irregularity derives from the fact that migrants either entered without

compliance with the legal procedures required by the reception country and/or were

not complying with the legal conditions attached to their residency and/or

employment. The key objective is thus to shed light upon the specific problems

encountered by smuggled migrants through comparing their experiences with those

who have alternative trajectories and legal situations.

Theoretical Framework and Research Design

Though the functioning of labour markets is understood in different ways by diverse

and conflicting intellectual traditions*above all neoclassical and Marxist*studying

Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 855

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them generally entails exploring the way in which relations between workers and their

employers are organised (Tilly and Tilly 1994). It involves identifying the sectors

within which smuggled migrants are absorbed, the hiring processes, their working

conditions (hours) and levels of compensation (pay), as well as making an assessment

of power relations.

Conceptualising the sorts of labour market dealt with here is best achieved through

a portrait of the MSI*‘mode of structural incorporation’ (Portes 1981)*at the point

of destination as it impacts upon smuggled migrants. Portes usefully distinguishes

between the ‘structural’ incorporation of immigrants into the socio-economic

mainstream in Western labour markets, and that which is ‘relational’. The latter,

which involves embedding oneself into ethnic networks, is prevalent precisely in

contexts where the former is difficult to achieve, as is the case for most migrants from

Third World countries.

The formation of immigrant or ‘ethnic economies’ that result from and facilitate

this last process occurs in at least two ways: MMMs*‘middle-men minorities’*that

provide specific (often commercial) services to immigrant and broader communities

and thus act as a buffer between newcomers and the host population; and EEs*‘ethnic enclaves’*spatially clustered networks of businesses owned by members of a

given minority that are based in proximity to the immigrant communities to which

they supply a wide array of culturally specific services. By privileging members of

their own ethnic group, MMMs and EEs*both of which thrive on the basis of ‘intra-

ethnic trust’ or ‘bounded solidarity’*frequently determine the career paths of

migrants from the point at which they arrive at destination, creating collective social

capital and economic value in what functions as a labour market for newcomers.

Much of the economic activity in these relational spheres takes place outside the

ostensible orbit of state regulation*as it often does where small enterprise is

concerned*a fact which requires reference to the concept of the ‘informal economy’,

a sub-field of economics, development studies and economic/urban anthropology

that intersects at various points with migration studies. Understood in its broadest

sense by Castells and Portes (1989: 12) as ‘all income-generating activities . . . not

regulated by the state in social environments where similar activities are regulated’,

the informal economy has come to be seen in recent years as a highly differentiated

entity that takes multiple forms and overlaps with ethnic economies in complex ways.

Governed by and dependent upon the logics of enforceable intra-ethnic trust that it

produces and is based upon, informality often thrives on and complements the forms

of social capital generated in EEs and MMMs, but it is not reducible to them and has

its own autonomous dynamics.

The research presented here focuses exclusively on migrants originating from

Pakistan and Afghanistan. It says nothing about the experiences of other nationalities,

ethnic groups, women or children, yet refers to migrants who were not smuggled at

all, and even includes British citizens who live and work in the UK legally. The unit of

analysis is thus defined less by means of entry, legal status or the economic sector in

which migrants work than by ethnicity and nationality. This is because evidence

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suggests smuggling often occurs within migration systems that are segmented by

ethno-national groupings and networks which funnel migrants into geographically

specific localities, even if phases of the smuggling process are ‘outsourced’ to locals in

different countries (Bilger 2006). The recent high-profile dismantling of a major ring

run by Turkish Kurds is a case in point. Customers were predominantly other Turkish

Kurds joining family and friends in North-East London (Cowan 2005). Chinese

‘trafficking’ situations also involve individuals of varying legal statuses and migratory

trajectories: Lin Liang Ren, the gangmaster at the centre of the Morecambe Bay

tragedy, arrived in Britain as a student in 2000*as did his girlfriend, who is also

facing charges (Carter 2005).

Of the smuggled migrants who do enter the UK and reside within it, stocks of

Pakistanis and Afghans, taken together, are likely to constitute a proportion of the

estimated 430,000 illegally resident migrants who populate the UK that is as

significant as any other single nationality (Woodbridge 2005). Numbers may be

estimated in the tens of thousands. Having entered the country in their thousands for

much of the 1990s, they figure prominently in Home Office asylum and immigration

statistics, which give a rough indication as to which groups are likely to make up the

‘illegal’ population. In 2004, the year in which this research was conducted, 1,710

Pakistanis and 1,395 Afghans applied for asylum, putting them in fifth and ninth

place respectively (Home Office 2004: 43, Table 3.2).

These figures, of course, are for the UK as a whole: this research, which was

conducted in London, is thus likely to reflect certain specificities of the city’s

economy that are not necessarily generalisable to other locations. Some reference to

the findings of other case studies is made, but rigorous comparison is outside the

scope of this article.

Methodology

The findings presented here are based on primary data collated from 20 semi-

structured interviews with migrant workers, employers and migrant organisations.

The data were systematised using ATLAS qualitative data-analysis software, and

triangulated against the findings of parallel studies, statistical and press reports. The

strategies adopted in order to facilitate access to the relevant population evolved

somewhat organically in the course of the research process. They involved a number

of strands, the first of which entailed developing a series of non-institutional links

with migrants and employers through existing contacts from my previously

conducted doctoral research on Pakistanis in London. Snowballing produced some

interviews. Secondly, and rather more importantly, a new set of contacts was

developed by approaching migrant workers directly, without an intermediary, in their

places of work. Shops peopled by Pakistanis, near Pakistani settlements in London,

and obviously identifiable as Pakistani-owned, were targeted. Though unorthodox,

this last tactic proved effective at reaching sections of the population in question that

would not otherwise have been accessible. The fact that most respondents were met


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and interviewed on several occasions allowed for extended probing, and gave greater

scope for verifying the reliability of testimonies. It also facilitated participant

observation.

These methods had several important consequences. The balance of the study was

heavily tilted away from Afghans, as a consequence of the researcher’s linguistic

limitations as an Urdu speaker of Punjabi origin with no pre-existing Afghan contacts

(interviews were conducted in Urdu and transcribed simultaneously into English).

Information generated from the interviews with two migrants from Kabul and two

voluntary workers at an organisation that provides support for Afghans in West

London (together with press reports) is used as a ‘control’ rather than a fully

independent case study. Its function is to help contextualise the experiences of

Pakistanis and make some tentative comparative deductions.

The profiles of seven of the smuggled migrants referred to in this article are

displayed in Table 1. With the exception of Khan Saab2 and Aamir, who had both

claimed asylum, all had been illegally resident for lengthy periods of time. All but one

(Aamir) confirmed they were or had been involved in illegal work. Interviews and

participant observation took place in a halal butcher’s where two of them*Chacha

and Khan Saab*were working at the time. Rashid was interviewed on a number of

occasions in a small newsagent’s in central London where he works.

Four non-smuggled migrants were also interviewed in depth: Nobil, Halim, Chotu

and Bacha, who arrived in the UK via various legal routes of entry. All were legally

resident in the UK at the time when they were interviewed (Halim has since over-

stayed). At least two of them were or had been involved in illegal work. Two were

students (Chotu and Nobil); the other two visitors. These encounters were spread

across different locations, taking place either in the workplace or over a meal.

The seven employers who participated were all Pakistani (see Table 2 for selected

profiles). Four confirmed and spoke at length about their hiring of illegal labour

(Aziz, Aman, Irfan, Nasir). The other three provided background information on the

economic context of the labour market (Latif, Talat and Brick Lane Baba). All of these

employers are British citizens, but only Aziz and Aman are British-born. Irfan

migrated to the UK as a young dependent and was schooled here. Talat came as a

student, and Nasir as a spouse (both began their time in London as workers). Brick

Lane Baba is an ‘old’ migrant worker who arrived in the UK in the 1960s and worked

for many years in the garment industry. None entered the country illegally; all were

interviewed in their places of work.

The Context of Reception: Arrival and Absorption

That the changes wrought by de-industrialisation in the UK had disproportionate

consequences for British Asians, and Pakistanis in particular, is well documented

(Kalra 2000). The fact of their concentration in those sectors of the economy that

were hit hardest by the decline in manufacturing, together with the existence of

discriminatory barriers to their entry into the mainstream economy, rendered them

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Table 1. Profiles of smuggled migrants

Name AgeCity/province

of origin EducationMaritalstatus

Occupationprior to

migrationModality ofmigration

In UKsince Legal status

Employment inUK � current

Employment inUK � previous

Khan Saab 24 NWFP FA S Unemployed Smuggled 2002 Legally resident,working full-time

Meat-shopworker

Cash & Carry

Cha-Cha 50 Lahore M Owner severalclothingshops

Smuggled 2004 Legally resident,working illegally

Meat-shop/garment-factory worker

Unknown

Aaloo 28 Peshawar M Factoryworker


Chicken-shopworker

Unknown

Rashid 28 Lahore BA S Propertydevelopment

Smuggled Legally resident,working illegally

Workssupermarket/newsagents

Grocery store,food factory

Wasim 30 Kabul Matric S Small-shopowner


Chef intake-awayrestaurant

Construction

Hamid 23 NWFP �age 11 S Agriculture(rice/wheat)


Construction None

Aamir 33 Kabul BA S Governmentemployee

Smuggled 1992 British Skilledprofessional,primary sector

Unknown

Notes: NWFP�North-West Frontier Province; FA�A-level equivalent; BA�Batchelor’s Degree; Matric�Matriculation; M�married; S�single.

Journ

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Migra

tionS

tud

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Table 2. Profiles of selected non-smuggled migrants and British-born participants (*�divorced)

Name AgeCity/province

of origin EducationMaritalstatus

Occupationprior to

migrationModality ofmigration

In UKsince Legal status

Currentemployment

in UK

Previousemployment

in UK

Halim 25 NWFP Matric S Unemployed Visitor 2004 Legally resident,working illegally

Chicken-shopworker

Take-away-restaurantworker

Chotu 20 Punjab BA S Student Student 2004 Legally resident;working full-timeillegally

Meat-shopworker

None

Nobil 26 NWFP MA S Student,retail-storemanager inQatar

Student 2004 Legally resident;workingpart-time

Receptionist Credit-cardsales; securityguard;receptionist

Nasir 27 Punjab Matric M* Estate agent/phone-shopowner

Spouse 1998 British Employer, meatshop

Security guard;Grocery-storeworker;Meat-shopworker

Aziz 28 London BA S N/A British-born N/A British Employer; runsfamily-ownedchain ofgrocery stores

None

Irfan 44 Lahore FailedA-levels

M N/A Dependent 1973 British Employernewsagents/sandwich shop

Worker innewsagent’s

Aman 23 London A-levels S N/A British-born N/A British Employer/worker infamily-ownedrestaurant

None

Notes: NWFP�North-West Frontier Province; Matric�Matriculation; M�married; S�single.

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highly vulnerable to unemployment in the 1980s. The subsequent proliferation of

small businesses in Britain’s rapidly expanding service sector provided low-skilled,

low-paid job options for those who continued to work. With the growth in numbers

of the community through reproduction and ongoing immigration, Pakistani

businesses in London have developed and expanded to impressive levels, though

they remain largely located within the ‘secondary sector’ of the British economy.3

As a consequence, Pakistani smugglees do not step into a vacuum, but enter long-

established socio-economic structures of labour absorption based upon the pre-

existing, historically established networks into and along which they are funnelled as

they search for employment. If migration from Afghanistan often takes place along

the same smuggling routes, indications are that, upon arrival at destination, these

networks ensure that Pakistanis and Afghans face a markedly differential opportunity

structure (Engberson and Van Der Leun 1998) in terms of their employment

prospects, which are based on the respective levels of social capital to which they each

have access. The relatively large pool of settled Pakistanis with established businesses

means Pakistani newcomers can quickly experience impressive levels of relational

embeddedness by inserting themselves into the thriving ethnic enclaves located close

to old Pakistani settlements. There also exist a number of businesses, run by middle-

men Pakistanis, which serve wealthier segments of the city’s (non-migrant and white)

population, directly through shops, restaurants or the provision of services such as

off-the-books painting and decorating. These often pay higher wages than employ-

ment opportunities that are spatially restricted to Pakistani residential areas.

The Pakistani ethnic economy is treated here as constitutive of a unified labour

market in which a newsagent and halal butcher are part of the same organism, on the

basis that it is peopled predominantly by Pakistanis. The presence of a handful of

Urdu-speaking Afghans and Indians in even the most ‘Pakistani’ of these economic

units underlines the fact that nowhere may ethnic economies be neatly divided off by

country of origin, or classified as discrete entities. But the striking absence of certain

groups reflects the segmentation of London’s migrant economy in accordance with

not just ethnic, but also linguistic and religious belongings and affiliations, as well as

gender, generation and ‘race’ (women, white Britons and the British-born offspring of

Asian migrants are for the most part conspicuous by their absence).

The following accounts of arrival reflect the extent to which social networks located

geographically within areas of immigrant settlement can act as a cushion which

absorbs the initial shock of having been smuggled into a context that would otherwise

be even more unwelcoming and insecure. Not uncommonly fed and sheltered for

often weeks on end by long-settled and established family members, friends or

contacts who have themselves in many cases been naturalised, their entry into the

wider local labour and housing markets that make up the EE takes place almost

seemlessly. In some cases, the household itself is able to organise employment in these

initial phases:


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Rashid: I started in East London. I had a friend’s brother there. I chose England asthere are lots of Asians and at that time the US was very difficult . . . I stayed withhim for two weeks. I helped them with their business. They got me a job in grocerywhere I made friends with an Indian guy, and four of us got a house with fourrooms. It cost £50 each a week. The owner was a Pakistani, in Manchester. He tookthe rent in advance for each two weeks.

Khan Saab: I came to London because lots of my people have been in Bradford andin East London since the 1970s. Punjabi and Pathan here [East London] is the samething. I came to a friend here. I was with him for two weeks. They’re a long-settledfamily, with women too.

Asad: I didn’t want to go anywhere but the UK. I spent two weeks in Leeds, whereI had a friend. I also had a friend in London whom I joined after two weeks. He’sbeen here since 2001. He was waiting for me as I got off at the tube station. He gotme a job*I was at his place for a month. I’m still doing that job*constructionwork.

All three extracts underline the importance of social networks in explaining why

Britain was a preferred destination for Pakistanis (particularly since the US became

difficult to enter illegally following 9/11). The flow of Pathan arrivals since the 1970s,

it seems, fostered chains of movement and settlement which melted into what were

previously predominantly Punjabi-Mirpuri communities in Pakistani settlements

such as East London, where the inter-ethnic mix is particularly complex, and

interwoven with a host of other diasporic economies which retain a connectedness to

equivalent localities in the North of England.

Afghan immigrant businesses and employment networks are less developed, so

there are fewer opportunities for Afghans seeking employment (mass Afghan

migration to the UK is, on the other hand, a recent phenomenon driven less by

economic push factors than by political displacement). Based primarily in East and

North-West London, during the early stages of arrival Afghans often seek to insert

themselves into Pakistani (and other South Asian) businesses and so face obvious

disadvantages, particularly if they do not speak Urdu. More generally, it has been

argued that refugees face a tougher set of circumstances than labour migrants when

seeking employment (Malheiros and Black 1997). Taken together, these differences

explain the higher level of vulnerability that Afghans experience in Britain: there were

several cases involving Afghans amidst the reports of forced labour and employment

by British ‘gangmasters’ which recently appeared in the British media (Lawrence

2005a, 2005b).

Some Afghans (especially those with good knowledge of Urdu) manage to find

employment in the older South Asian businesses in London. Although they do not

experience the relative ease that Pakistanis do in being incorporated, this represents a

step up for men such as Wasim, for whom transiting Eastern and Central Europe had

meant being funnelled into local criminal networks, where he was compelled to

dabble at various points in pick-pocketing, drug-running and people-smuggling for

local gangs in order to survive and facilitate his onward movement. Having spent

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several months peddling in Moscow and Kiev, languishing in detention in Bratislava

and being unemployed in Brussels where ‘there were Iraqis, Kurds but not enough of

my own people’, he now feels considerable ‘peace of mind’ in London, where he

works in catering, has ‘friends and can wander freely’ and anonymously in the streets

of his local area.

Employment Outcomes: The Impact of Legal Status and Mode of Entry

Smuggled migrants do not congregate exclusively in particular businesses and

establishments within the industries and sectors in which they are usually found,

and they do not experience an obviously identifiable set of outcomes that are unique

to them (a glance at Tables 1 and 2 makes this fairly clear). Nor is illegality necessarily

a discriminatory barrier to entry within the lower tiers of the EE labour market,

where migrants of irregular status enjoy a certain level of anonymity and sense of

safety*‘It’s not written on your forehead’, to use Rashid’s words.

Indications are, moreover, that legal status does not always put regular migrants at

an advantage compared to ‘illegal’ workers, particularly when finding their feet in the

initial phases of their insertion within the labour market. It is not uncommon to

encounter Pakistanis with British citizenship toiling alongside smugglees and illegally

working visitors and students in similar conditions. This is unsurprising when

interpreted in the context of the various modes of legal entry that Pakistani

immigrants to the UK adopt. In 2004, for example, 212,000 Pakistanis were given

leave to enter the UK yet relatively few (1,985) were issued work permits. It is highly

likely that some proportion of the 12,600 students and 92,300 visitors who entered

the UK that year found some sort of informal paid employment, particularly in

London where the cost of living is known to be higher than elsewhere. The same is

true of asylum-claimants. Spouses, who in the long term can acquire British

citizenship, often speak relatively poor English upon arrival, and their educational

qualifications are not acknowledged by British white-collar employers; 3,170 were

admitted as husbands and fiances that year (Home Office 2004: 34, Table 2.2).

More generally, the labour market attainments of Pakistanis in Britain are

acknowledged to be amongst the poorest of all ethnic minorities, a consequence of

discrimination and low levels of skill and social capital (Cabinet Office 2003). Indeed,

given the deeply segmented nature of the British labour market, it is quite plausible

that many naturalised labour migrants remain structurally confined to the same jobs

and conditions within the secondary sector for the duration of their working lives,

where migrants of varying legal statuses jostle for similar kinds of employment.

If migratory history and legal status make little difference to employment

outcomes within the smallest micro-businesses of the enclave, for those who move

beyond it, access to a minimum of documentation can affect levels of pay, particularly

in some larger, more-established businesses that are more ostensibly integrated into

the regulated sphere, which they supply with goods and services. Here, in the liminal

spaces at the intersection of the formal and informal economies, one encounters


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complex systems of tax evasion and a flourishing business in forged and fraudulent

documentation which combine to provide opportunities outside areas of primary

Pakistani settlement. This is similar to that which occurred in the Netherlands in the

1990s (Van Der Leun 2000) and in France (Samers 2003), where migrants

circumvented regulation through ‘hybrid’ arrangements, often with the knowledge

and co-operation of employers.

The West London food factory in which Rashid worked paid undocumented

workers some 70 pence less per hour than those who were able to produce (by

whatever means) a National Insurance number. He received an hourly wage not

radically lower than the national legal minimum at the time:

I was paid in cash but there were ‘legal’ payslips if you had an NI number. Somepeople came without documents. There’s no need for documents there. . . . Thosewho come without documents, they gave them even less money: £3. I was getting£3.70.

The suggestion here is not that smugglees face no barriers to entry into the

mainstream economy. It is, rather, that the migratory history and legal status of a

given migrant do not determine in any mechanistic way their employment trajectory

within the migrant-worker economy. As time goes by, legal status itself can be

malleable, according to Rashid, who had worked for four years in London’s migrant

economy the first time I interviewed him:

Eighty per cent of the people I’ve seen start off without documents. They getmarried, legally, or by paying. Some get in via [applying for] asylum. Some getasylum.

This last statement communicates the general manner in which illegality is seen more

as a stage in the process of incorporation than as a permanently fixed status.

Job vs Work: The Structure of the Labour Market

If migratory trajectory and legal status have little consequence within the secondary

sector, it is to the labour market itself that we must look in greater detail if we wish to

understand the fundamentals of smuggling’s consequences for migrants themselves*its structure, its sociological texture and the way in which it absorbs all migrants.

Within the enclave, the extent to which a migrant will have difficulty in finding

employment varies in accordance with a number of factors, some of which are

supply-related. Some of the ‘unemployed’ migrants I met, such as Nobil and Halim,

were mostly unwilling to do the ‘work’ that was on offer. A conceptual distinction,

then, needs to be made here between having a ‘job’ and doing ‘work’. The former,

which can be defined as regular hours of guaranteed employment and rates of pay, is

much sought after and hard to come by*there is fierce competition between migrant

labourers for a number of positions that is relatively fixed at any given moment in

time. In contrast, ‘work’, which can be defined quite simply as labour to be provided

864 A.N. Ahmad

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on whatever terms and conditions an employer may be offering on a take-it-or-leave-

it basis at a given moment, is all too readily available. It tends, Halim told me on the

day I first met him with Aaloo in the meat shop, to be ‘not fit for humans’. He had

done between 10 and 15 days of relatively light cash-in-hand work within the service

sector, putting meat on kebab skewers in a restaurant for £15 for around seven hours’

work each time. Most available work tends to veer toward the margins of the service

sector, and is generally physical*lifting 40�50kg bags of rice and oil in Asian-owned

Cash & Carrys, at around £25 for 14 hours, was frequently cited.

There is ample ‘work’ too, in the construction industry*building, painting and

decorating*reported Halim, Aloo and Nasir. The going rate for work, Nasir said, is

as little as £20 for 14 hours of work. It often means doing ‘dirty jobs that no one

wants to do’, like fixing tiles in the rain. He said it can mean working for white

employers, and that Asian employers can pay even less*£17, or even a mere £15.

But generalisations that universalise the experience of illegal labour as semi-slavery,

even within the construction industry, must be treated with caution. Those migrants

who had actually worked in construction painted a complex picture in which ‘work’

was by no means the only or even most common situation:

Wasim: I worked for an Afghani builder for £35�40 a day. We worked for six orseven hours a day, sometimes up to nine. It depended on the weather*sometimesyou can’t work more than six hours in a day. People without documents do thatkind of work.

Asad: It’s eight or nine hours a day, six days a week (except that, when it rains, wedon’t work) . . . I started on £35 for the first two months. Then it was £40 (doingthe same work*painting, putting up walls) for a month. Then (and still now) I get£50. A new guy is just a helper . . . labourers*newcomers with the leastexperience . . . A helper hands you bricks. After a few months he does stuffhimself, he learns to make (mix) cement, how to put up a wall (arrange bricks)himself, on his own.

Wasim, who started as a builder when he first arrived, thus confirms that building

and construction is often where migrants without documents end up. What he

describes, however, does not quite resemble the harsh scenarios delineated above by

Nasir, Halim and Aaloo. The average figure for a day’s labour is between £4 and £6 an

hour. The testimony of Asad, meanwhile, suggests that labourers with the least

experience begin on £35 a day for an eight- or nine-hour day (again, around £4 an

hour, about the legal minimum at the time). This was the wage he himself began on,

and was paid for two months before he learned to paint and erect walls without

supervision, at which point he began receiving £40 a day. By the fourth month, he

was earning £50 for the same number of hours, and still is a year after having started

work. Men get paid up to £70 a day, he added, once they acquire a certain level of skill

and experience:4

I get £50 a day . . . that’s £300 a week . . . Some get more. Some get 70*those withmore experience: documents are irrelevant. There is no difference in our work and


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the work that guys with documents do (I know a local guy doing the same). I workunder a Punjabi boss and alongside two other guys. We work for different folks,white and Asian.

A ‘job’ in construction, then, is acquired through middle-men co-ethnics who work

for both the immigrant community and sections of the broader populace. Although

obviously no picnic, especially in winter when it can involve putting up walls in the

cold and strong winds, it is attractive enough in terms of compensation for Asad:

I like the life here*it is good in terms of money. Life is better due to the peace ofmind [that it brings]. You earn around £800�900 a month (you don’t workeveryday because of rain). In a month where I don’t earn much, I send only £400home. In a good month, I’ll send £700�800.

Asad himself, whose entry into the industry was organised by a contact, never had

to endure ‘work’, and has always had ‘jobs’ in construction, which explains his

relatively decent wages. This last fact emphasises once more the importance of social

networks in shaping and facilitating insertion outcomes, and confirms the falseness of

the assumption that black-market work is necessarily exploitative and concentrated

amongst deprived populations (Williams and Windebank 2002). It may also point to

a specificity of the construction sector, in which flexibility, off-the-books transactions,

self-employment and informality are the norm and seldom imply inferior terms and

conditions of work (Nisbet 1997).

Khan Saab’s first job, attained after a month of asking around from shop to shop,

was less satisfying, and suggests that, within the service end of the ethnic enclave, a

more despotic kind of regime is suffered by those who, without strong or weak ties,

lacked enough social capital to insert themselves into the labour market:

I worked in a food/grocery store owned by a Kenyan Hindu*an Indian, long-

settled. It was hard work. Fourteen hours of hard work a day, six days a week.Heavy work*I had to lift 20kg bags of rice and oil. I’d have to carry stuff around tothe cars of customers . . . I got £180 per week. My hours were 7.30 am�9.30 pm. Ihad a 30-minute break, and he would watch to make sure we took no more. He

gave us nothing else [no food or perks]. It was a very hard time*really tough work.I’d wake up at 6.30 am and be working until 9.30 pm. If you were five minutes late,he took off £10 from your wages . . . It was such hard work that I couldn’t get up inthe mornings because my body ached so much.

What can be concluded from this passage on the first job, apart from the fact that it

pays £2.14 an hour, and involves a minimum of 84 hours of work per week? It seems

fairly clear that the first ‘job’ is in fact just a fraction up the ladder from ‘work’ in

terms of progress, if it can be called that. In all senses other than the fact of its

regularity in terms of hours and location, it resembles ‘work’: back-breaking,

physical, manual labour conducted under severely harsh conditions; undocumented,

cash-in-hand, not requiring any kind of National Insurance details or indeed a

passport (as opposed to legal or pseudo-legal jobs that are fraudulently documented

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by employers). The worst kinds of job, in other words, are basically the equivalent of

regular ‘work’.

Yet even migrants in such difficult situations eventually manage to assert their

agency in such a way as to improve their circumstances. Having graduated from

‘work’ to a ‘job’, Khan Saab eventually managed to make a move which may seem

horizontal but which, in his eyes, constituted a genuine improvement from the

despotism of his experience at the Cash & Carry:

When I was there, I was fed up after a week, and I wanted out, but I just didn’t have

the time to look for another job. Eventually, I took a day off work, and went around

looking for a job. Nasir was opening the shop at that time, so he took me on. My

wages started at £120. Now they’re £180. I’ve worked for six months for little

money but he treats me well. He’s a good guy. The first guy said, ‘If you want to

pray at work you can’t have this job’. ‘That’s no use [to me]’, he said.

More tangible improvements come to those with greater levels of social capital (as

opposed to that which is merely based on the sharing of ethnic and national origins).

An urbanised Punjabi with reasonable knowledge of English and excellent contacts

who provided him with fraudulent documentation, Rashid managed to graduate

from the ethnic enclave to employment in the business of a middle-man enterprise

through several stages in a process which began with a shift away from East London

to a less-purely South Asian environment:

Then I went to a contact in West London. I worked in Acton Town in a food

factory . . . it made sandwiches and burgers. There was a bakery (where I worked).

Biriyani was prepared and sold in food shops*their own shop and others. You’d

get orders for 40, 50 samosas. Forty to fifty people worked there. They were from

India, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal and Brazil... It opened at 4 am*deliveries would

start then [the drivers would start then]. But normally, you’d start at 5 am. Bakery,

sandwiches*there were different sections. We made cakes and muffins. I started

7[am] and I finished at 3.30 pm, eight hours a day, 40 hours a week (I worked five

days).

This move was already an improvement for Rashid, whose own account of his

trajectory reflects the traditional class difference between London’s East and North-

West: ‘West London is cleaner, less congested, more educated, modern*like the

difference between Gulberg and the Old City in Lahore’. Yet his position in the labour

market was further strengthened over time with the acquisition of certain skills or

expertise. So much so that he was able to end his dependence upon ethnic networks

and get a job in a ‘white’-owned, mainstream company:

I did two years in the West London factory. Then I wanted to do something

better . . . I did the same job in another company . . . Now I work in Park Royal, a

place like the first company, except it’s a white company. I’m a bakery chef . . . I was

skilled in how to make cake slices . . .. I knew nothing before I came here. Time is

an amazing thing . . . it’s easy once you know a job, hard if you don’t.


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What does this all this mean for the process of insertion within the labour market?

Tentatively, it suggests that, even within industries in which undocumented labour is

rife, it can by no means be assumed that illegally resident smugglees are uniformly

paid slave wages. On the contrary, the irrelevance of legal status has a certain levelling

effect, whereby those without documents can get paid as much or even more than

newcomers who are legally resident. Differences in pay, where they exist, are more

likely to be dictated by whether one is doing ‘work’ or has managed to acquire a

regular ‘job’ through contacts, social networks or making oneself indispensable to an

employer over time.

Smugglees are more likely to be engaged in ‘work’ at some stage or another than

most regular migrants, although they are by no means the only migrants who endure

it. Some, owing to the efficacy of their social networks, manage to avoid it altogether.

We can further conclude that it is unlikely that any migrant of any legal status who

manages to stay in the UK for a period of time will accept ‘work’ indefinitely. Nor

does it seem they have to. Every single one of the migrants I interviewed found some

form of ‘job’ over the course of the period in which the research was conducted. It

may be, of course, that there are constellations of migrants hopelessly trapped in

‘work’ situations that resemble semi-slavery, but this remains a theoretical possibility

that I did not encounter.

The Question of Trafficking: Employer�Employee Relations

To return to the core theoretical debate surrounding definitions, we might well ask at

this point just how far smuggling can be associated with trafficking on the basis of the

information generated by our case study.

Firstly, all indications are that irregular migration from within the Afghan�Pakistani migration system to the West is facilitated by agents who have no role

beyond enabling that immediate objective of entry (Koser 2006). In the lexicon of

Kyle and Dale (2001: 33), it can thus be classified as a migrant-exporting scheme rather

than a slave-importing operation: payments, for the most part, are made either in

advance or as soon as/if the migrant confirms his or her arrival, which effectively

removes the role of agents from the equation. In many cases there is no debt bond, no

obvious coercion, nor even manipulation of the migrants’ destiny by smugglers

beyond the facilitation of their arrival. As a case study of smuggling, it is as ‘pure’ (as

far away on the continuum from the trafficking scenario) as it can be.

Nor is the issue of ‘forced labour’ in the aftermath of smuggling an obvious

problem: the labour market appears to function fairly autonomously of smuggling

networks. The absence of active recruitment by employers is noteworthy. Workers

themselves move around from shop to shop, making enquiries, pressing employers to

activate their friendships and contacts to find them opportunities within the ethnic

economy.

The employers, for their part, are not seen by their employees as uniformly

tyrannical, violent or ruthlessly exploitative. Khan Saab spoke of Nasir (in his

868 A.N. Ahmad

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absence) as a ‘very good man’. Wasim said his boss ‘is like family. I go to his house.

They give me tea and feed me’. In the meat shop, a middle-aged smugglee employed

by Nasir was referred to affectionately as ‘Chacha’*literally, ‘uncle’. Chacha himself

spoke of his boss in familial terms. ‘I take care of them’, he said, as he made them cups

of tea and fussed over the other workers.

These observations of the way illegal work is organised in London suggest a picture

that is quite different to the portraits of slave labour that often attract newspaper

headlines. Employer�employee relations and networks are complex and embedded in

various types of social relations, as was clear at the meat shop run by Nasir, who

worked such long hours for so little return that his own status might easily be

described as ‘thinly disguised wage labour’. His business folded in the course of my

research, suggesting it was not dissimilar to the kind identified by Kloosterman et al.

(1999) in their survey of halal butchers in the Netherlands*enterprises that lead a

precarious existence based on cheap labour to survive.

Another indication of the absence of trafficking is the relative separation between

housing and labour markets. Provision of housing and food, common in instances of

trafficking and forced labour, allows the oppressor to control the victim’s movements

and whereabouts even outside working hours. Gangmaster Lin Liang Ren is reported

to have rented properties for housing cockle-pickers, employed someone to cook

meals for them and even used cheap vans and mini-buses to transport them to and

from the beaches (Carter 2005). Yet none of the migrants I interviewed were housed

by their employers.

What is clearly visible in the sociological structure of the housing and labour

markets is the existence of a stark class division within migrant enclaves based on the

differential position of longer-settled migrants who are legally resident and, in many

cases, British citizens. Employers constitute a relatively unified propertied class of

established migrants who systematically exploit the underclass of new migrants who

work for and rent rooms from them. Yet this class division, and the exploitation it

facilitates, can hardly be likened to the sort of misery inflicted by pimps who profit

from the earnings of trafficked women, or even easily equated with the plight of the

Chinese cockle-pickers. If anything, it merely reflects the general structure of class in

contemporary Britain, which is increasingly defined by acute inequalities in property

ownership.

This class discrepancy is simultaneously the key to understanding the ways in

which there are fundamental long-term labour market consequences of illegality in

status. Even if it does not dictate a rigidly definable set of outcomes in the short or

medium term, it firmly rules out the possibility of their entering the ranks of

employers. Doomed to remain as uninvited guestworkers, they cannot even open

bank accounts, let alone access basic health-care and public services, or countenance

purchasing property.

If, in the early 1990s, the existence of a means for illegal entrants to regularise their

status via the asylum system allowed smugglees such as Usman to attain British

citizenship, the subsequent hardening of state policy now dictates that illegal entry


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increasingly consigns smuggled migrants to permanent clandestine existences.

Neither Asad nor Wasim had any intention of announcing their presence to the

authorities. Asad’s agent had explicitly advised against it, given the political status of

asylum in Britain. This tendency, in future, may well lead to clearer labour market

trajectories and class positions for smugglees, as distinct from their peers who entered

the country legally at similar points in time.

Explaining the Structure of the Labour Market

In North-West London, restaurant-cafe owner Aman reported that legal status made

no difference at all to wages. He confessed to having employed a Sri Lankan who

volunteered his services for less than the amount normally paid to dish-washers,

suggesting that wages can go as low as a migrant is willing to work for (they paid him

£2.50 an hour, he sheepishly admitted). The cafe does, however, pay fairly regular

wages that are fixed in relation to what similar nearby businesses pay, which suggests

that, to some extent at least, local, historically established, geographical realities

determine labour market conditions and characteristics.

More generally, wage rates and working conditions tended to converge across

businesses within the same sectors that were within walking distance from each other.

Unsurprisingly, East London*the starting point for most Pakistani newcomers (as it

was for the Irish, the Jews and other communities historically)*continues to be

associated with low pay and poor living conditions.

Within areas and sectors, skills were also a determining factor. Wages are not

uniform, and vary in accordance with the demand for certain types of labour. At the

time this research was conducted (2004), dish-washers would normally get around £3

an hour and waiters between £3 and £3.50 per hour, whilst chefs (who are considered

relatively skilled) received a comparatively handsome figure of £7 an hour, Aman

pointed out. The higher rates of pay that some migrants receive are attributable to

factors such as competence and experience rather than legal status. Nasir told me that

precision and speed in cutting meat, good manners and familiarity with customers all

have an impact.

A good chef such as Wasim, who is paid almost £5.50 an hour, can earn a wage

higher than £50 a day, in contrast to ‘helpers’ who cut vegetables, clean and wait

tables, and wash dishes: ‘I’m experienced so they pay me well*my name guarantees

good work’.

In building and construction, the differential between migrants of varying legal

statuses is even less pronounced: documents are completely irrelevant, according to

Asad, whom I interviewed in depth about his experiences in the last year or so since

his arrival. Though pay is generally higher in more mainstream businesses, the factors

which structure labour market outcomes are not radically different, despite the veneer

of legality and complex systems of fraud. Although Irfan underpays some of his

sandwich-shop staff in relation to what is declared as their income, their actual

hourly rate does not radically differ from the minimum wage.

870 A.N. Ahmad

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The motivation behind middle-man Irfan’s employment and pay policy, he

explained, is not simple cost-cutting. It simply wouldn’t make sense to pay less than

he does: given the cost of living in central London, the pool from which employers in

the centre can hire staff is not as great as that which supplies the EE, despite the

relatively high levels of pay they offer, because migrants can seldom afford to live

nearby. Most of Irfan’s staff are Pakistanis and Afghanis (and a handful of East

Europeans) who live in peripheral parts of the city, so their wages must be high

enough to cover the extra cost of daily travel. Their incomes, then, are set as much by

the realities of labour supply and demand and the spiralling cost of travel in the

capital, as much if not more than by state regulations as to what constitutes a fair

wage.

More importantly, he pointed out that he needs to offer a reasonable package to his

employees to ensure the job remains attractive, so as to keep staff turnover to a

minimum. Indeed it is in his interest to make the job attractive to his employees, and

keep them happy. For those who work at the sandwich shop:

. . . lunch and breakfast is free. They eat what they want. They can take home what

they want. Because it’s Asian food, the Pakistanis get to take home rice and chicken.

So they save money on food. I pay them OK and let them eat and drink. And I give

them incentives. In time, his [or her] £170 will become £250. They’re happy. I have

very little turnover of staff. I have [the same] staff there for years.

The fact that Irfan actually increases the wages that his workers receive over time,

regardless of their legal status makes clear that cost-saving is not his sole or even

principal motivation. For a small business such as his, attracting and maintaining

reliable staff is a priority. Having to retrain personnel and rebuild trust is one of the

main headaches an employer gets. The main attraction of migrant workers, and in

particular ‘illegals’, is that, unlike ‘natives’, they have no expectations of upward

mobility given the highly segmented nature of the broader, national labour market:

It adds to stability. Basically, the guy doesn’t have any future so I’m not always

having to keep on the look out for a new guy to replace him when he moves onto

something better (like a British guy would). It’s not my fault he’s in that

predicament. But the fact that he is gives the stability to the small businesses which

don’t have to retrain new staff.

Conclusions

In this article, I have examined smuggled migrants’ experiences within the ethnic

economy at destination in the short and medium term. Far from being concentrated

in nodal occupations or work places, migrants of varying trajectories*smuggled and

non-smuggled, legally and illegally resident*work side by side. Where there are

differences in outcomes and the problems they face, these are best contextualised

through comparing and contrasting their respective situations. The boundaries


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between them, in any case, are porous over time, especially since illegality in

migration and residential status do not necessarily go hand-in-hand.

Imbued as they are in power relations and calculated exchanges of economic value,

the relationships between employers, middlemen and workers discussed in this article

are not to be romanticised. Many of the ‘work’ scenarios described here resemble the

unenviable subaltern forms of unpaid and insufficiently compensated work

performed historically by oppressed groups such as women and domestic labourers.

But, as we have seen, generalised portraits of ‘illegals’ being coerced into forced

labour by unscrupulous employers are equally off the mark. The structure of the

labour market that absorbs new migrants does not always make clear distinctions

between so-called ‘legal’ and ‘illegal’ migrants. Whilst some Pakistanis in London do

suffer harsh abuse by employers, these do not structure the totality of experience for

smuggled migrants, whose plight ought not to be conflated with victims of

trafficking. Oft-bandied-about notions of ‘super-exploitation’ and ‘slavery’ within

media and policy discussions of smuggling are best treated with caution.

If there is one normative policy suggestion advanced here, it is that states exercise

restraint and selectivity in combating irregularity in migration and labour, despite the

pressures to be seen to be acting against a problem that is often mistakenly perceived

in homogenously acute terms. The implications of cracking down on small businesses

to placate demands for an immediate end to so-called ‘forced labour’ would by no

means, necessarily, be positive for migrants themselves, and could have unintended,

negative consequences*one of which could include effectively pushing many of

those with ‘jobs’ into harsh ‘work’ situations.

Acknowledgements

This article is based on the findings of the Leverhulme Project Grant No. F/00 182/U

on human smuggling and trafficking, the UK half of which I completed in London in

2003�04. Khalid Koser was the Principal Investigator and conducted a parallel study

in Pakistan and Afghanistan (Koser 2006). Thanks to John Salt, Khalid Koser, Pnina

Werbner and Sakari Saaritsa for comments on earlier drafts.

Notes

[1] Little of this is UK-based. See, for instance, JEMS’ April 1998 special issue*24(2)*which

contains evidence from several countries, and Cinar et al. (2000) which, typically of key

publications in the field, make no reference to London or Britain.

[2] All names quoted in the text are pseudonyms.

[3] In 2001 it was estimated that Pakistanis owned 1,700 businesses in London, thought to

employ 6,000 people at an average of 3.5 per business. It should be stressed, though, that

these are approximate calculations that do not include unlisted micro-businesses, and so are

almost certain to be underestimates (Greater London Authority 2001: 22�3).

[4] A study of Albanian migrants in London (King et al. 2003: 47) found that two individuals

who worked in the building industry began on wages of between £25 and £35 a day for eight

hours’ work, a figure which increased to around £45 within a short period of time, and then

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reached as high as £60 a day, without any changes in the legal status (wages were paid cash-

in-hand). These figures and facts correlate fairly precisely with Asad and Wasim’s

experiences, which adds to their plausibility.

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"The Labour Market Consequences of Human Smuggling: ‘Illegal’ Employment in London's Migrant Economy" in Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 34: 6, 2008, 853-874.

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