Border regimes and unfair conditions for Eastern European migrant workers in the Swedish construction sector, a labor process theory perspective

Paper in proceeding, 2022

This paper investigates border regimes, precarity, and employment conditions from a labour process theory perspective (Braverman 1974; Thompson and Smith, 2010; Mezzadra and Neilson, 2013). Our specific focus is on the studies investigating the working conditions, labour rights, and employment forms for Eastern European migrants in the Swedish construction sector. In particular, we ask: how does the border regime shape employ ment forms and work practices, and what are the new forms of resistance and organisation in the Swedish construction sector? The migrant workers are conditioned by Swedish and EU legal aspects, depending on the country they originally come from, and its re lation to the EU. The origin of the migrant workers in the Swedish construction sector has continuously shifted since the 1950s, with Eastern Europe being especially prominent since the 1990s. Along with this shift, the focus on organized crime and on “unf air conditions” considering both a national and protectionist gaze, has been increasing in Sweden, implying that the understanding of the “unfair conditions” is something external, atypical, and non Swedish. A critical perspective on these issues calls for a “methodological de nationalism” ( 2019). At the same time, the Swedish model system of high regulation and welfare protection is highly challenged (Mackenzie et al., 2010), led to the emergence of two labour markets. The first one, dominant and highly regulated, is represented by big companies and construction unions, and is characterized by collaboration, good work relations, equity, democracy, and welfare (Haakestad and Friberg, 2000); the second one, subordinated and quite unregulated, is embodied by small companies working partially in illegal conditions, and is not characteristic for the Swedish labour market (Koch and Sederblad, 2019). As such, this paper focuses on the ways the sector has adapted to migrant labour inequalities due to labour and migration law, and the organisation and resistance forms that have been adopted. Labour process theory allows us to expand our analytical frame on the way the work is organized in the Swedish construction sector, its variations, and the ways those re late to what we can basically
understand as migrant workers’ rights. It means that we cannot separate labour, class, and the features of the border regimes, as we need to include a knowledge of a “total social organization of labour” (Gluckman 1995). Meth odologically, a systematic literature review is conducted on the precarious and unequal working conditions, as well as on labour and employment forms, for Eastern European migrant workers within the Swedish construction sector. Our methodological choice of focusing on that context aimed at accounting for its specific peculiarities. Our study shows that a labour process theory perspective and a “denationalizing” analytical framework can reveal factors that impactlabour processes connected to immigrant workers. Moreover, we draw attention to the way the criminalizing gaze may be national, but the value adding labour force is indeed international. Thus, this paper contributes with knowledge production regarding the implications of border regimes for international workers’ employment forms, and precarious work practices having become part of the construction sector.