Overcoming precarity in the gig economy through solidarity: a study of successful organising practices of subcontracted migrant workers

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The International Labour Organization estimates that 164 million migrant workers in high-income countries are paid substantially less (e.g., -30% in Italy) than native workers and experience multiple forms of injustice beyond the workplace (ILO, 2018; 2020). The existing literature on migrant workers and union organising tend to overlook these workers' own resistive initiatives and focus instead on mainstream trade unions' attempts to organise them (e.g., Kelly, 1998; McAlevey, 2016). By contrast, my PhD Thesis showed that subcontracted migrant workers could organise effectively despite being confined to precarious, insecure jobs within the gig-economy (e.g., warehousing and parcel delivery). Migrant workers can limit their precarity and obtain significant victories that include material and subjective gains by organizing within independent (Pero', 2019) labour and community organisations. By grounding the analysis in migrant workers' views and experiences, my PhD provides innovative and detail-rich insights that enhance the understanding of how migrant workers - who are often considered unorganisable - can develop effective informal resistive initiatives, solidarity practices and obtain material concession and more dignified treatment at work, particularly in the gig economy. This Fellowship will allow me to rework and transfer my evidence-based research to significantly wider audiences interested in Industrial Relations and Sociology of Work, Social Movements, Migration and Ethnic Studies and Sociology. It will contribute to practice of labour, civic and community organisations as well as policymakers concerned with social inequalities by analytically describing concrete experiences that help them develop better support for precarious migrant workers. This Fellowship's aims have been carefully designed to allow me to become an international researcher and develop a transnational bottom-up approach to study migrant workers' collective initiatives:1) to establish a track-record of high-quality publications through the production of two articles in leading scientific journals ('Human Relations' and 'Work, Employment and Society') and a monograph proposal for Cornell University Press, an internationally renowned North American publisher in the fields of Labour Studies and Sociology of Work. 2) to present findings to two international conferences (ILPC 2022; BUIRA 2022) to extend my existing international network, develop collaborations and disseminate my research;3) to communicate my research findings to a broader audience by organising an online seminar with the Italian independent union with whom I conducted my PhD study (S.I. Cobas), producing, translating (English, Italian, Spanish, French, Arabic) and sharing a report on my findings with S.I. Cobas and other independent and international labour and community organisations (e.g. ILO, ADL Cobas; ILWU; Coordinamento Migranti); to develop a blog and two-online workshops for knowledge and practice exchange with policymakers (Labour Inspectorate and Immigration Observatory of Bologna, Volta Think-Tank, CGIL) and international labour, civic organisations (ILWU, Unite, IWGB, UVW, Migrants' Organise). 4) to conduct limited research (N=15 semi-structured interviews with S.I. Cobas, United Voices of the World and Independent Workers of Great Britain) on challenges and opportunities in negotiating with multinational employers to initiate transnational bottom-up research on migrant workers and independent unions' joint initiatives (article to be submitted to Work, Employment and Society, see objective 1);5) to expand my skills in "Policy Impact", "Social Media for Engagement" and grant proposal development through training and support provided by the University of Nottingham and the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS);6) to submit a funding proposal to the ESRC Principal Grant Investigator to conduct comparative research on precarious migrant workers' mobilisations in Europe