‘Tiptoeing on Eggshells...'– Between The Student- Migrant-Worker and The Law
Creators: name: Dirisu, Mohammed
Publisher: name: figshare
Year: 2020
Subjects: subject: 160303 Migration
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: FOS: Sociology
subject: 180118 Labour Law
subject: FOS: Law
subject: FOS: Law
subject: 180119 Law and Society

description: Temporary and/or part time employment can be quite integral to the student-migrant experience, this is despite the fact that the express purpose of their admission into the United Kingdom is designated as for study and not paid work. This explicit object is reflected in specific restrictions affixed to international students employment rights whilst studying; they are typically restricted to a maximum of 20hours of work per week during term time, proscribed from working full-time and as independent contractors. This thesis thus seeks out students lived employment experiences vis-à-vis these rules. The dearth of this insight not only deems the extant corpus of knowledge on students everyday mobilities as whole transnational actors inherently fragmented, it also detracts from any potential actionable endeavours towards bettering their overall circumstance. This study adopts a strictly qualitative paradigm where the relevant data is collated by way of interviews and ethnographic observations with cohorts of international student workers. This thesis aims to make original contributions to knowledge in two principal ways; First, I account for the employment experiences of these student workers through the analytical framework of precarity towards interrogating the various manifestations of insecurity in their lived realities. This empirical agenda is nuanced by the structures of migration control and labour market temporalities they are subject to. I find that these students must often contend with intersecting forms of structural disadvantage and insecurity whilst navigating the job market. This consequently reify their dependence on certain employment forms and relationships, and render them increasingly susceptible to unfavourable work conditions including low pay, exploitation, discrimination and abuse. I close by suggesting that Higher Education Institutions as the primary sponsors of these students must do more to forearm them with candid insights on what to expect of the temporary employment market, and also with comprehensive knowledge of their accruable work rights. For the second, I adopt the socio-legal schema of legal consciousness to interrogate subjects relationship with the law by way of the legal restrictions on their employment extents, and to interrogate their agency in efforts to derogate from these rules. These derogations are consequently conceptualised as semi-legality; an analytical construct that marks an indeterminate halfway point between utter illegality and legality vis-à-vis migrant labour. I find that there are two discernible plots towards enabling semi-legal employment and for evading detection thereof. The first involves students undertaking work with different employers simultaneously, meanwhile the second entails students contracting for work through the use of private limited companies. I argue that the specifics of the student's violation of the visa rules has profound distinctive implications for their legal consciousness disposition and more so the manner in which they simultaneously resist and make recourse to the law and its institutions towards resolving workplace grievances.