Crossing borders: migration and survival in the capital's informal marketplace

Abstract

Major discourses on UK migration tend to be framed by simplistic dichotomies which currently inform policy, media, and public debates: migrants as parasites or providers, exploiters or exploited, victims or criminals. However, our ongoing ethnographic research amongst post-communist populations (PCPs), in particular those from the accession and new accession states such as Lithuania, Poland, Romania, etc., and London's informal and criminal economies reveals a more complex and worrying set of realities. Static boundaries are more or less non-existent as many migrants find themselves, for myriad reasons, constantly traversing the borders between the capital's formal, informal, and criminal markets. This, in turn, requires a constant shifting of identity and status as a means of successfully negotiating passage back and forth across these economic margins. These fluctuations present a challenge to the various agencies within criminal justice and the third sector whose competing agendas are largely based on stable categorisations of migrants.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paddy Rawlinson

Dr Paddy Rawlinson is Lecturer in Sociology at the London School of Economic and Political Science

Pete Fussey

Dr Pete Fussey is Senior Lecturer and Programme Leader for Criminology at the University of East London