Abstract - London’s 24/7 rhythms throb with lives of nocturnal workers. The Sleepless Bats, whose nocturnal lives I have studied are bio-automatons remote from co-operating or from supporting each other in solidarity. Migrant night shift workers do something together but not with one another. Night shift workers survive precariousness because they are immune to co-workers’ needs, and not because they offer each other mutual support out of humanness. Through the analytical lens of learned bodily knowledge, the study interrogated the modes of the embodiment that over time enhance night workers’ social life skills. The becoming of embodied cooperation not only involves routinised, rhythmic practices ingrained in the body through repetitive, physical tasks, but also physical gestures that build social relations amongst workers who learn to engage meaningfully in dealing with ambiguity, resistance and difference. The relevant aspects of embodied forms of interaction investigated involve workers’ trajectories being disrupted from naturally cooperative to socially competitive.
Read full article here.
Abstract - London’s New Spitalfields market night shift workers face weak possibilities for solidarity, and so presumably they are alienated from the mainstream, diurnal society. Since, generally people working nights permanently will suffer from isolation, sleep deprivation, physical exhaustion and mental alienation. Because, evidence from occupational health inquiries show how night shift work disrupts the circadian rhythms (Arendt 2010), and from anthropological and global studies showing that unmet social expectations lead to “hysteresis effects” (Bourdieu, 1984) and biological dissonance amongst the “walking ghosts” of India’s call centre agents (Aneesh 2012:527–29). Unless, of course, people in other job sectors are not working at night permanently, on 11/12-Hour night shifts like the respondents in this study or they are highly skilled migrants capable of buying solutions for sociability. The paper analyses firstly, three main contributing factors: (a) the expansion of the working day into the night; (b) the major alterations of time over time, and (c) the global city, the nurturing ground for producing the bio-automatons maintaining its global night-time economy. Secondly, the four migrant night shifters’ ethnographic portraits canvased here, expose their resilience in enduring work precariousness, and corrosion of social ties and networks with their families, away and at home.
Read full article here.
Abstract – January 2007, was a turning point for Romania and certain changes have taken place during the six years since its integration in the European Union (EU). This working paper addresses some of the key issues in relation to the process of Europeanisation that have affected the patterns in the everyday lives of Roma and non-Roma community travelling to live and work in London in the past seven years. In the context of Romania’s accession to the European Union, this paper shows that ‘being European’ applies differently to citizens of old vs. new member states. The paper also analyses critically public perceptions, political and media class-based discourses practiced in old EU member states to show how these backlash against new EU member states’ citizens, such as Romanian Roma and non-Roma. Findings reveal paradoxes – the utopian dream that all European citizens should have free-movement in the EU fades away in the face of everyday life of the Romanian citizens abroad. More so, this fundamental right has been denied to those who represent the concept of Europeaness, the Roma people. January 2014 however, starts a new phase for Romanian citizens, but their rights to free-movemnet are threatened in the uncertain future as new reforms of the EU Treaty are proposed to make the fundamental freedom of movement in Europe, less free. Keywords: Romania, Romanian Roma, London, Europeanisation, mobility, work, European Union (EU) accession, United Kingdom (UK).
Read full article here.
Executive Summary - Between February and April 2013, Open Doors (clinical, case management and outreach service for sex workers in East London) undertook a commission from the Newham Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership to conduct an assessment into the needs of Street Sex Workers in the borough. The initiative was commissioned in order to understand the scope and types of issues facing Street Sex Workers in Newham and was delivered using an action research methodology.
Read full report here.