Statusless Chinese Migrant Workers in the UK: Irregular Migration and Labour Exploitation

Abstract

Few issues today are more controversial than international migration and the most contentious debate concerns irregular migration. Irregular Chinese migration causes particular concerns in destination countries, due to the fear of mass emigration from the world’s most populous country and the seemingly highly organised and risky human smuggling operations involved. Drawing on two years’ fieldwork in the Chinese community in the UK and interview data collected with fifteen irregular Chinese migrants, this thesis provides new understandings of the phenomenon of illegal migration from China to the UK and irregular Chinese migrants’ involvement in human smuggling, labour exploitation and illegal economic activities as both offenders and victims. This thesis argues that irregular (Chinese) migration is a product of the UK’s immigration control system, not simply because it defines what illegal immigration is but also because the system is inherently paradoxical. Out of the economic need for greater mobility of people, the British government not only encourages the entry of those deemed beneficial to the economy but also periodically admits those deemed ‘unwanted’ to reserve a cheap, flexible workforce. Out of the political need to reassert the nation-state’s sovereignty, however, the government deploys perennially restrictive immigration policy and particularly exclusionary and punitive discourse and practice against the entry and employment of the poorer and the less-skilled. This study identifies that, under the paradoxical system, irregular Chinese migrants enter the UK mainly through the ostensibly legitimate routes rather than being smuggled clandestinely into the country. After entry, migration controls exacerbate their exploitability by posing the threat of detention and deportation and denying them access to basic rights. In challenging the migration control system, this thesis not only raises question about the ethics of excluding and criminalising a disadvantaged population, but also examines its repercussions for the human rights norms that underpin the liberal democracy.

Date of Award	31 Dec 2021
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	The University of Manchester
Supervisor	William Hebenton (Supervisor), Rosemary Broad (Supervisor) & David Gadd (Supervisor)