Oral Presentation Institute of Australian Geographers & The New Zealand Geographical Society Conference 2014

PRECARIOUS WORK MIGRANTS IN GLOBAL CITIES: SPATIAL RELATIONSHIPS IN HONG KONG AND LONDON (13783)

Geoffrey DeVerteuil

The emergence of a growing ‘reserve army’ of work precarious migrants has drawn the attention of geographers, as well as those interested in surplus populations. Economic precarity among migrants usually derives from a lack of access to the welfare state combined with precarious working arrangements. Precarious work is strongly associated with subcontracting of the burgeoning bottom-end of the labour market, characterized by unstable (sub)contracts through outside agencies, job insecurity, unsociable hours, undeclared and low wages, social isolation, and frequently part-time and/or temporary. Work precarious migrants are surplus populations because they generally are unable to avail themselves of a consistent of living wage. Work precarious migrants are especially concentrated in global cities, where demand for their degraded labor runs high. So unstable are conditions of precarious work, and so weak are the measures of state support, that many migrants seek alternate support for their social reproduction, including informal communities and family and, as we shall focus on, the voluntary sector. And yet, with some exceptions, little attention has been paid to the spatial overlap between work precarity among migrants and voluntary sector organizations within global cities. This presentation aims to explore the spatial relationship between residence of recent precarious work migrants living in global cities and voluntary sector organizations that promote their well-being (e.g., recreational, religious, social and health). I propose comparing Hong Kong and London, both sharply polarized due to bifurcated migrant streams ranging from the highly-skilled expatriate to work and legally precarious migrants.