Global Cities at Work: New Migrant Divisions of Labour

This book is about the people who always get taken for granted. The people who clean our offices and trains, care for our elders and change the sheets on the bed. Global Cities at Work draws on testimony collected from more than 800 foreign-born workers employed in low-paid jobs in London during the early years of the new century. Global Cities at Work breaks new ground in linking London's new migrant division of labor to the twin processes of subcontracting and increased international migration that have been central to contemporary processes of globalization. Global Cities at Work raises the level of debate about migrant labor, encouraging policy-makers, journalists and social scientists to look behind the headlines. The book calls us to take a politically-informed geographical view of our urban labor markets and to prioritize the issue of working poverty and its implications for both unemployment and community cohesion.

Jane Wills, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, Jon May and Cathy McIlwaine are all in the Department of Geography and The City Centre at Queen Mary, University of London. The team have already published articles based on their ESRC-funded research in Transactions of the Institute of British Geography, International Development Planning Review, the British Journal of Industrial Relations, European Urban and Regional Studies, Just Labor: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society and the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society. The research has also provided intelligence for London Citizens' living wage campaign.