Book launch: The Precarious Migrant Worker, Polity (Glasgow and London)

We are extremely pleased to announce the book launches for Panos Theodoropoulos's forthcoming book, The Precarious Migrant Worker: The Socialization of Precarity (Polity Press, released on the 2nd of May 2025). Both events are free to attend for everyone.

Migrant workers in the West are at the frontline of the precarious condition that is coming to dominate economic life in neoliberal societies. Yet despite the highly insecure and exploitative working conditions they routinely face, labour mobilizations by precarious workers are rare.

In this immersive portrait of the daily realities of precarious migrant labour, Panos Theodoropoulos found work in Glasgow’s warehouses, factories and kitchens to uncover the ways that precarity is lived and contested. Connecting the realms of structure, subjectivity and culture, his analysis shows that precarity not only dictates workers' labour conditions, but socializes them in an individualist, survival-oriented struggle that erodes solidarities and enforces its own neoliberal logic. Crucially, however, precarity and the wider neoliberal culture are unable to erase workers’ material awareness and experience of class injustice. It is on this basis that the foundations of new forms of struggle must be laid.

This book was always intended to be a tool in the arsenal of social movements fighting to improve our collective existence. Therefore, beyond introducing the book, both events aim to provoke wider discussions on neoliberalism, migration, border violence, and collective resistance. We are honoured to be joined by scholars and trade unionists who have focused their energies on analysing and organising around these topics.

Professor Bridget Anderson is the current director of the Migration Mobilities Bristol institute and one of the most important contemporary thinkers on the topics of migration, precarity, and borders.

Professor Andrew Smith has deeply analysed the ways in which class relations saturate our collective imaginaries and our creative capacities, most notably through his 2024 book, Class and the Uses of Poetry: Symbolic Enclosures.

Professor Yasmin Gunaratnam has researched and written extensively on issues of collective resistance, race and ethnicity, feminist theory and politics, migration, borders, and death, combining an expansive intellectual arsenal with a delicate understanding of subjectivities and human vulnerability.

Dr Francesca Stella's research explores migrants’ experiences of settlement and belonging, and how they relate to integration policies and broader political discourses on migration.

Gavin Brewis is one of the strongest and most original emerging voices in criminology. His current research focuses on the stigmatisation of working class youths in Scotland, and his sharp analysis foregrounds the ways in which class-based structural violence forms the foundation of our collective culture.

We will also be joined by representatives from the Pan African Workers Association (PAWA) and the Industrial Workers of the World.

Valentine Guruuswa is a founding organiser of PAWA and currently serves as its General Secretary.

Sab Cat is the Co-Secretary of the IWW and supports the organisation of precarious workers across the country, including that of incarcerated workers.

Marley Davies is an organiser and union representative with the Industrial Workers of the World. She is currently focused on organising in care, which is one of the most intensely exploitative sectors of the British economy.

We sincerely look forward to seeing you there.

Glasgow event, 9th May 2025 (no registration necessary)

London event, 12th May 2025

Register here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/schoolofeducationcommunicationsociety/1586989

Poster/artwork credits: Ilias SpyOne Tsafaras.