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The Labour Market Consequences ofHuman Smuggling: ‘Illegal’ Employmentin London's Migrant EconomyDr Ali Nobil AhmadPublished online: 14 Jul 2008.
To cite this article: Dr Ali Nobil Ahmad (2008) The Labour Market Consequences of HumanSmuggling: ‘Illegal’ Employment in London's Migrant Economy, Journal of Ethnic and MigrationStudies, 34:6, 853-874, DOI: 10.1080/13691830802211158
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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
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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
Smuggled 2004 Legally resident,working illegally
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
Smuggled 2003 Legally resident,working illegally
Chef intake-awayrestaurant
Construction
Hamid 23 NWFP �age 11 S Agriculture(rice/wheat)
Smuggled 2003 Legally resident,working illegally
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
al
ofE
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Migra
tionS
tud
ies8
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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
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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
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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.
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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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