Mobile labour: An introduction

Taken together, the various articles that make up this special issue offer a variety of analyses in different social, cultural, material, political, economic, and historical settings from which to understand how discrimination, and segregation are formed in contexts of high mobility and intense labour, with a special focus on processes of racialization, but not excluding others like age and gender. The papers explore how mobility and labour converge to create and perpetuate racial categories, cultural profiling, and forms of exclusion. The contributions include both contemporary and historical studies, and their geographies encompass the arctic, the Middle East, Asia, the Atlantic, Europe and the seas themselves. These include analyses of labour lifestyles in arctic working camps, the racialization of Filipino workers in container ships, or the racialization of Chinese workers in Singapore, the livelihoods of expats between Europe and Dubai and how they cope with different racial categories, as well as an analysis of segregation in Cyprus and Italy, the roles of age differentiation in the future of mobile labour, and a historical perspective on mobile labour in the Atlantic in the 19th century. The main point is to show how mobility is a factor in amplifying categories of race, as well as gender and age. Mobility does not necessarily mean deleting or alleviating these. Highly mobile lifestyles, particularly in the context of labour mobilities, do not translate into a more liquid, transnational, or hybrid outset. What people do and how people move operate together to perpetuate certain categories and profiles – and, as we discussed, there are even new categories and profiles that are created by a moving lifestyle. This special issue only offers a starting point to consider and tackle these important issues.

Publication year:2021

Accessibility:Open