In the final episode of season two of the It’s Just Research podcast, hosts Sara and Pippa were delighted to speak to Dr Panos Theodoropoulos about the unique intersection between migration and labour.
The hosts note the book’s navigation through Dr Theodoropoulos’ life as a precarious migrant worker in various factories from greeting card manufacturers to Amazon packing warehouses to the chaos within restaurant kitchens. The book intertwines theory and commentary with descriptive narratives and fieldnotes, offering the reader an opportunity to engage with the actual world that Dr Theodoropoulos comments on.
In this episode, our hosts and Dr Theodoropoulos engage in a lively discussion about why it can prove to be difficult to organise precarious migrant workers. Dr Theodoropoulos speaks from his position as a former worker in many of these precarious working conditions, as a scholar, as a union organiser and as a migrant. Hosts Pippa and Sara connect with Dr Theodoropoulos as fellow migrants, but comment on how there are complexities in the experiences of different migrant workers.
The episode explores the ‘good worker = good migrant’ complex that Dr Theodoropoulos investigates in his book, and the metaphor of the migrant being either the thief of the cash cow. The latter concept explores the notion that the migrant is either stealing jobs and money, or they are a useful cash mule who they can use for cheap labour.
Ultimately Dr Theodoropoulos’ research sought to discover how the migrant worker begins to identify with this conundrum, and why it therefore becomes difficult to resist and reform. They discuss how migrant workers not only risks their jobs, but also risk losing their status as a hard worker, therefore perpetuating them deeper into the system.
The conversation delves into scholarship on labour, migration and bordering, with an insight into the gaps in research that Dr Theodoropoulos found, was troubled by and sought to fill.