‘Finally, We Are Well, Stable’: Perception of Agency in the Biographies of Precarious Migrant Workers

Abstract

This article examines how experience with precarious work influences the notions of control and empowerment among female migrant workers. Instead of focusing on migrant workers as victims of a continuous chain of precarious employment, the article aims to enrich the current knowledge by focusing on the complexity of elements involved in subjective assessments of agency. Based on research of Ukrainian female migrants, we show how precarious jobs can be perceived as enabling, allowing women more control over their lives. To understand these perceptions of agency, we show how important it is to focus on the embeddedness of migrants’ reflective choices in their life trajectories. In the context of migration, this implies a shift in understanding from one in which migrants compare their experience (of labour or gender structures) between country of origin and country of destination towards a more nuanced approach.

Vulnerable Women: Negotiations Among Migrant Women in the Aftermath of the Ukraine War

“…At one point she even considers it is "amazing" that she could, to different extents, master English, Russian, and Ukrainian. Some of these preliminary findings resonate with those of Trlifajova and Formankova (2022). However, unlike Trlifajova and Formankova's (2022) study on Ukrainian female migrant workers in the Czech Republic the current study focused much less on structure and agency and more of the lack of agency (e.g., cannot leave without sufficient financial support), as well as the depicted intercultural dynamics in a war-torn context.…”

“…While some earlier studies on female Ukrainian migrant workers (e.g., Trlifajova & Formankova, 2022) have focused on the relationship between structure and agency, proculturation appears better conceptually suited for those women who experience difficulties of leaving, while also highlighting the cultural dynamics to a greater extent than the structure-agency dyad.…”

“…Similar to Trlifajova and Formankova (2022), I have divided the narratives of the five participants into separate sections within the broader section Results and Discussion, followed by a short summary. Due to the small sample size, it was possible to include all participants.…”

“…The optimal situation would be to be able to go back and forth. Hence, the kind of agency that foreign workers have in a post-migration context (e.g., Trlifajova & Formankova, 2022) is not as concrete for these young women who (must) reside in Ukraine. Instead, this discursive notion highlights a form of cultural perception of Ukraine, which signifies patriotism.…”

Dissenting and innovating: Freelancers’ emerging forms of organising in the Netherlands

“…However, apart from a few recent studies (Alberti and Però, 2018;Però, 2020;Trlifajová and Formánková, 2022), the focus of the industrial relations' scholars dealing with the forms of organising of precarious workers has mainly been on organisations, delving less into the agency of workers and their ability to build bottom-up collective actions.…”