Panos Theodoropoulos

Coming from a social movement background and as a migrant worker and trade union organiser myself, my PhD research used 21 semi-structured interviews with precarious migrant workers as well as a covert ethnographic immersion as a worker into six precarious workplaces in Glasgow to analyse the subjective and structural barriers that migrant workers experience vis-a-vis resisting exploitation through collective action. I wanted to understand 1) how do structural constrains curtail migrants' abilities to resist exploitation; 2) how do subjective understandings of their migration impact workers' actions/decisions; 3) how do they subjectively identify/perceive themselves as workers and as migrant workers; and 4) what tools need to be developed so that social movements, NGOs, and trade unions better represent, empower, and organise (with) migrant workers.

I am mostly interested in the connection between subjectivities and structures like the economy and state policies. More specifically, I am interested in how these two domains interact to reproduce worker exploitation, including that of migrant workers.