UK Food Businesses' Reliance on Low‐Wage Migrant Labour: A Case of Choice or Constraint?
This chapter critically examines migrant labour demand at the producer‐end of the UK food industry. This industry has experienced considerable intensification over recent decades, associated with the concentration of power amongst a relatively small number of transnational food producers and retailers. For labour‐intensive employers, this process has manifested itself in an increasing dependence upon low‐wage migrant workers (principally from Poland, Lithuania, and Portugal). We map this dependence and assess the extent to which it is inevitable. Our argument is simple: the use of low‐wage, and mainly temporary, migrant labour functions as a hidden ‘subsidy’ to hard‐pressed employers. There are other options available to farmers and food processors in the UK, but the easiest response to falling profit margins is to cut labour costs and raise productivity by importing workers eager for employment (however intense this employment may have become).
Keywords: migration, low‐status, gangmasters, intermediaries, labour markets, food, farming, intensification
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .