Migrant lives. A comparative study of work, family and belonging among low-wage Romanian ...

265 Pages·2013·1.66 MB·English

by  Margaret Okole

The London School of Economics and Political Science

Migrant lives. A comparative study of work, family and belonging
among low-wage Romanian migrant workers in Rome and
London

Andreea Raluca Torre

A thesis submitted to the Department of Sociology, London
School of Economics and Political Science, for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy, London, April 2013
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Declaration
I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the PhD
degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is
solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is
the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out
jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it).

The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is
permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may
not be reproduced without my prior written consent.

I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief,
infringe the rights of any third party.

I declare that my thesis consists of 98,232 words.
Not exceeding 100,000 words including footnotes but excluding
bibliography and appendices

Statement of inclusion of previous work (if applicable)
I can confirm that the thesis includes some material of a previous
paper I have written based on my fieldwork in London: “Living
transnationally. Romanian migrants in London”.
www.runnymedetrust.org

Statement of use of third party for editorial help

I can confirm that my thesis was copy edited for conventions of
language, spelling and grammar by Margaret Okole Editing and
Proofreading Services, Birmingham, UK.
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Abstract
Framed within the context of growing economic changes generated by globalisation
in Europe and of the transition towards an increasingly service-based economy and
therefore labour market restructuring, the present study investigates the intersecting
lived experiences of work, family and belonging of intra-European migrant workers and
their families in Rome and London. In particular the comparative examination focuses
on the dynamics of mobility and work which Romanian women and men are embedded
in and enact within the transnational geo-political space of the enlarged EU, as well as
on the mechanisms and processes influencing their transnational mobilities.
The analysis, based on a longitudinal multi-sited fieldwork conducted in two
European locations – Rome and London - develops within three key institutional sites
of migration: labour market, family and “community”/belonging. Within each of these,
a specific process of migration is then explored: access to and participation in the labour
market, transnational family formation and activities, formation and meanings of
belonging/“community” in the two cities. The overall aim is to compare and provide an
in-depth account of the various dimensions of Romanian migrants’ experiences in the
context of different national and supranational policies, labour market realities, and socio-
cultural institutions.
Furthermore, the in-depth exploration, which combines narrative interviews and
participant observation, provides empirically grounded insights into the existence of
variables such as nationality, gender, class, historical experiences and long term
individual or collective/family goals, which, together with social and immigration
policies, labour market demands, work permit systems, and new geo-political openings
of the European Union, are involved in and effectively influence migratory and
settlement decisions and practices.
As such, the study provides a valuable contribution to the empirical and theoretical
advancement of studies on transnationalism in the current evolving space of the EU.
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Acknowledgments

First of all I must thank my supervisors Dr. Patrick McGovern and Prof. Claire
Alexander, certainly for sharing their knowledge with me and for their detailed
comments on my work, but most of all for their thoughtful support and patience in
supervising a rather long and turbulent PhD during which they witnessed work and
maternity-related interruptions as well as continuous travels which culminated in their
student relocating at the antipodes of Britain.

In the first stage of my PhD I was fortunate to be based in Oxford where I benefitted
from access to COMPAS (Centre for the Study of Migration and Society). Many of my
ideas around issues of migration generated and developed within that research
environment and thanks to discussions I had with members of the staff. I would
particularly like to thank Prof. Ellie Vasta for always making herself available both
professionally and personally. Special thanks also to Nando Sigona for his intellectual
and social inspiration which most probably caused the starting of this PhD.
I owe particular thanks to the people who opened their houses and shared their stories
with me. Most of them offered me more than just the needed information for writing
this research; they offered help and advice during the very critical first stages of my
fieldwork, and most of all they offered long-lasting friendships. Partaking into their
day-to-day lives and experiencing joyful as well as stressful events together have
brought the much needed life to these accounts of migration.
Finally I thank Alessio for the never-ending discussions and exchange of ideas, for his
serenity and calmness, and for his endless loving encouragement which helped me
greatly to get through some of the most difficult moments of this PhD. But most of all I
thank him for taking our family “to the other side of the world” where I wrote this thesis
and where new ideas and projects are blossoming up for us.

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Contents
Introduction 9
Paradoxes of recent East-West intra-European mobilities 9
Aims of this research 12
Reframing transnationalism through a comparative lens 14
Romanian migrant workers in Rome and London 16
In the Italian context 21
In the British context 22
A road map to this dissertation 25
PART 1 THEORY, METHODS and CONTEXTS 27
Chapter 1 Literature review and theoretical framework 27
1.1. Introduction 27
1.2. Theorising migration: from economic analysis to migration systems/networks
theory 28
1.2.1 Migration systems/networks theory 29
1.3. Changing forms of contemporary intra-European migrations 31
1.3.1. Circular migration or transmutable circuits? 32
1.3.2. Irregularity and status mobility 34
1.4. Transnationalism 38
1.4.1 Critics of transnationalism 40
1.5. Transnational social fields and practices: a conceptual framework 41
1.6. Transnational networks 46
1.6.1 Types of networks 47
1.6.2 Gendered transnational networks 51
1.7. Concluding remarks: a theoretical framework for this study 53
Chapter 2 Research design and methods 57
2.1. Introduction 57
2.2. Multi-sited comparative analysis 58
2.3. Local contexts 60
2.3.1 London 61
2.3.2 Rome 63
2.4. Into the field 66
2.4.1. Access 68
2.4.2. The sample 71
2.4.3. Introducing the respondents 72
2.4.3.1 In London 72
2.4.3.2 In Rome 74
2.4.4. The interviews 76
2.5. The strength of narrative interviews 77
2.6. One last methodological note on researcher’s positionality 79
2.7. Conclusions 84
Chapter 3 Contexts of migration 86
3.1. Introduction 86
3.2. Romania: from “tele-revolution” to post-socialist transformations 86
3.3. Migration from Romania: main periods and mechanisms of migration 91
3.4. The Italian context 94
3.5. The British context 98
3.6. Conclusions 101

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PART 2 MIGRATORY WORKING LIVES 105
Migrants in a segmented labour market 107
Chapter 4 Working in the construction sector 110
4.1. Introduction 110
4.2. Migrant labour in the construction industry: informal practices, irregular status
112
4.2.1 In the British context 115
4.2.2 In the Italian context 116
4.3 Getting the job: mixed networks and transnational brokerage 118
4.3.1 In London 119
4.3.2 In Rome 123
4.4. Self-employment and informal co-national subcontracting 127
4.5. The intersection of work and gender: new intersubjective transnational fields 132
4.6. Conclusions 136
Chapter 5 Working in the domestic sector 139
5. 1. Introduction: migrant labour in the domestic/care sector 139
5.2. The demand for domestic help 141
5.2.1 In the British context 141
5.2.2 In the Italian context 142
5.2.3 Features differentiating the two contexts 142
5. 3. Entering the sector 146
5.3.1. Transnational networks 147
5.3.2. Other factors influencing access: nationality, religion and immigration
status 150
5.3.2.1 In Rome 150
5.3.2.2 In London 152
5.3.2.3 Status: being an (irregular) migrant 153
5. 4. Work in the domestic sector: between inequalities and power balance in the
workplace 155
5.5. Questioning the asymmetrical balance of power in the workplace: soft skills and
transnational mobility practices 158
5.5.1 “Soft skills” 159
5.5.2 Transnational mobility practices and job-sharing strategies 162
5. 6. Conclusions 165
PART 3 FAMILY AND BELONGING 168
Chapter 6 Transnationalism and the family 168
6.1 Introduction 168
6.2. Who is family in migration? 170
6.3. Transnational family networks 175
6.4. Between separation and keeping the family together 178
6.4.1. The use of new information and communication technologies 183
6.5. New family configurations 186
6.5.1. Children in migration and transnational grannies 186
6.5.2. Children in migration and long-term plans 188
6.5.3. Children in migration and the controversial side of remittances 190
6.6. Conclusions 193
Chapter 7 Identity, belonging and “community” 195
7.1. Introduction 195
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7.2. Forms of belonging: institutional vs. more personal dimensions of community
198
7.2.1. Institutional forms of community and reduced participation 199
7.2.2. “.... community means people you can trust” 205
7.3. “Community” and social and legal status 210
7.4. Belonging and roots: Romanian migrants vs. European citizens 215
7.4.1. Being Romanian, being Latin in Rome 216
7.4.2. Being Romanian, being European in London 220
7.5. Conclusions 223
Conclusions 226
Transnationalism and the relevance of the context: resistance within irregularity 226
Precarious working lives 229
Precarious lives: a transnational personal space of belonging and practices 231
Developing transnationalism further: a theoretical and empirical contribution 234
To conclude, one last theoretical/political contribution and call for further research 236

References 239

Appendix 263

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8
Introduction
Paradoxes of recent East-West intra-European mobilities
In the early 1990s, when the post-socialist states began a process aimed at
integration into European structures and institutions, a crucial “question of who belongs
to Europe” surfaced in the political and public debate (Morosanu, 2007). It became clear
that the “fall of the wall” and a future scenario of European integration, would not
necessarily bring to an end historical symbolic divisions separating the “Eastern bloc”
from Western Europe; quite the opposite, those were growing strongly and were likely
to persist (Stråth, 2000). Longstanding stereotypes outside the region, which have
depicted Eastern Europe as the “second world, as different from the civilised West”
(Hann, 1994: 229), were jeopardising their “right” to re-join Europe, to enter the “club”.
Processes going on in the “East”, the so-called “transition”, started to be described
pejoratively by the term “Balkanisation”, coined after the name of the geo-political
space which has been constructed as the “dark side” of Europe (Todorova, 10097;
Morosanu, 2007). The Balkans have in fact historically been created as “the Other of
Europe”, and “Balkan” has become a negatively connotated label standing for the “the
tribal, the backward, the primitive, the barbarian” (Todorova, 1997: 3). Cingolani
(2009) also observes how social-sciences scholars, through the use of expressions such
as “Balkan Orientalism”, “goulash or second economy”, “semi-periphery”, have also
contributed to the construction of a homogenised image of Eastern Europe as a remote,
primitive, dangerous yet fascinating space. Similarly, Hann (1994: 230) points to the
role of creative writers, such as G. Orwell, who differently have also been “influential in
this process” by producing “the most powerfull rapresentations of the communist
Other”.
The weight of those derogatory representations appears to be still standing.
Discourses of Otherness have in fact re-emerged with renewed power with the arrival,
after 1989, in the Western countries of Europe of the first Eastern European migrants
(Morosanu, 2007). Since then, East-West intra-European migration has been commonly
thought to be dominated by low-skilled, irregular migrant workers, human trafficking,
and so called “bogus” refugees. A negative view of the “East” has therefore been cast
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on its people and has been closely experienced by those who decided to try their luck in
one of the Western European countries.
In actual fact, during the 1990s, Western European governments appeared to show
some degree of ac ceptance towards Eastern European migrants as opposed to
“immigrants from the South and minorities who were phenotypically different”
(Castles, 1998: 26). Because of their white, European and mostly Christian origins,
Eastern European workers appeared alm ost as a blessing at first for they epitomised the
perfect cheap worker willing to fill gaps in the western labour market without
necessarily triggering locals’ hostility and concerns with long -term social integration.
Yet, those favourable perceptions o verlapped with the spread in some of the richest
Western European nations of fears of mass-migration from “the problem child of
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Europe” . In 2002 for instance, when Schengen visa restrictions were lifted for
Romanian citizens, “images of Eastern post -socialist states waiting for the chanc e to
flood Western Europe with waves of migrants” (Woodcock, 2007: 494) were used by
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populist politicians and sensationalist media to describe the influx of migrant workers .
“Frightening” numbers soon made their way into t he public domain, with estimates
ranging between 25 and 50 million Eastern Europeans potentially “swamping” the
Western European labour markets and welfare systems overnight (Thränhardt, 1996).
Those worries grew alongside subsequent stages of the EU enlar gement process which
saw considerable numbers of citizens from Eastern European countries moving west in
search of work (Castles and Miller, 2009). Since then, migration from Eastern Europe
has become a highly controversial topic in most Western European c ountries (A. Datta,
2008).
This approach towards labour migration from Eastern Europe can be framed within
a well-known discourse which deploys two different views of current global migration:
on the one hand migration is viewed as a positive value and ec onomic asset (Pastore,
2008) for all highly-developed economies which, “because of demographic and socio -
economic reasons, find themselves increasingly reliant on immigrant labour” (Castles,
2008: 2) – from this point of view huma n mobility serves the needs of the free market
well. On the other, over nearly four decades, a negative attitude towards migration has
been growing in political debates at national and local level where the immigrant –

1
Bran, M. (2002) “Les Tsiganes Handicapés, de la Roumanie à l’Europe des riches”, Le Monde 12
July.
2
In France for instance, in the course of that year almost sixty articles were published by the two
main national newspapers, Le Monde (32) and Le Figaro (26), about Romanian illegal immigrants
entering the country (Woodcock, 2007: 5).
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