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‘Joining the BBC (British Bottom Cleaners)’: Zimbabwean Migrants and the UK Care Industry

2007; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 33; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/13691830701359249

1469-9451

JoAnn McGregor,

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism

Abstract This article contributes to the literature on ‘global care chains’ by examining the narratives of Zimbabwean women and men working as carers in the UK. It investigates why social care has become an important focus of employment for Zimbabweans, and explores the means by which migrants of different legal status have negotiated work in a diverse sector. The article explores the experiences of a highly educated, middle-class migrant group, who left their country in the context of deepening economic and political crisis. Some Zimbabweans have been able to use transnational mobility and care work as a means of coping, finding opportunities to meet family obligations and personal ambitions, while entrepreneurs have found openings to set up in business as care agencies, providing work for their compatriots and others. Yet the article also emphasises the stress and deskilling most Zimbabwean care workers have experienced in trying to support themselves and dependents through excessive hours of low-status and often poorly paid work, the strain of working in strongly feminised and racialised workplaces, and the insecurities and abuse produced by informality, including ‘tied’ and other forms of labour exploitation. There is a need for greater attention to be paid to the dynamics of race and gender in social care workplaces, and to means of securing the rights of migrant careworkers, who are playing an increasingly important role in caring for some of the most vulnerable members of British society. Keywords: Care SectorRaceGenderInformal EconomyDeskillingZimbabweans in Britain Acknowledgements This research was funded by the ESRC, grant number RES 000 22 0630. Grateful thanks are due to the Zimbabwe Association, Brighton Chireka, Angelous Dube and Mqondobanzi Nduna Magonya. Notes 1. The broader ESRC study involved interviews with more than 80 black Zimbabweans, 40 of whom were interviewed individually, and the rest in groups. Participants in the study were chosen to reflect diverse legal statuses and different forms of skilled and unskilled employment. They were identified by Zimbabwean intermediaries with different social networks, as well as through the author's own contacts, established through more than 15 years’ research in Zimbabwe. The interviews from the broader study are also drawn upon to throw further light on comparisons between the care sector and other areas of work, and because many teachers, nurses, students and those doing other unskilled jobs had also worked as carers. Unless otherwise stated, numbers and proportions cited in the article refer to the 32 interviews with black carers. 2. Major centres of Zimbabwean settlement outside London are Luton, Leeds, Slough and Leicester; there are significant numbers in Manchester, Birmingham and Coventry. However, Zimbabweans in the UK are scattered, partly because of the policy of dispersal of asylum-seekers and partly because of the importance of care work, for example, in coastal and other retirement centres (Mbiba 2004). 3. Smaller estimates relate to ‘core’ staff of residential homes and domiciliary care agencies. The larger figure includes NHS health care assistants, NHS agency staff and others (Skills for Care 2005: 6, 26). It is not clear whether all ‘temporary’ staff are included. Eighty per cent of carers are women, with the gender imbalance rising to 95 per cent in some segments of the market (Skills for Care 2005), though men outnumber women in strategic management roles (Eborall and Garmeson 2001: 15–16). In this article, ‘careworker’ and ‘carer’ are used loosely and interchangeably. 4. On risk in the new ‘flexible’ service sector more generally see Allen and Henry (Citation1997: 182); on the spread of temporary work see Ward (Citation2005). 5. See Community Care Market News, 11(8), February 2005. 6. The London borough of Lambeth had vacancy rates of 35 per cent in 2001 (Eborall and Garmeson 2001: 7). 7. The inadequacy of local authority payments to subsidise places in private homes has added to the pressure on providers to reduce costs (Laing and Buisson Citation2000; Player and Pollock 2001: 238). See also Community Care Market News, 11(5), October 2004. 8. Pay was particularly low in the North of England, though the introduction of the national minimum wage had a disproportionate effect there. In London and the South East, the national minimum wage did not bring changes that amounted to a living wage (UNISON 2003a). In April 2004, the median gross pay of female care workers was £6.40, ranging from £4.80 per hour or less in the bottom decile and £8.30 in the top decile, with worst pay in the private sector (Skills for Care 2005: 8). 9. The reasons for this are unclear, though the care sector regulators are now investigating the issues surrounding the growing importance of migrant carers. 10. Many Zimbabweans interviewed in this study had worked for agencies with a predominantly Zimbabwean or Southern African staff. The labour force of other subcontracted service providers can show similar concentrations—cleaning, catering, porterage and security work in parts of East London, for example, is dominated by Africans (Wills Citation2001: 3). 11. It is beyond the scope of the article to explore competing views on the growth of the informal sector and explanations for it, reviewed in Samers (2005). 12. Asylum figures peaked at 7,695 in 2002, falling to 3,280 and 2,045 over subsequent years, according to Home Office statistics. 13. See Ranger (2005a); also the annual ‘Report on Activities’ of the Zimbabwean Association, 2003 and 2004. 14. Lawyers’ appeals for support for destitute Zimbabweans in this situation were unsuccessful, unless the asylum-seekers signed up for a voluntary return programme. Only 45 Zimbabweans had chosen to go back by late 2003. Ravi-Low Beer, presentation to Zimbabwe Association, AGM 2003. 15. Zimbabwean and some other migrant men have entered the workforce disproportionately to the sector's overall gender balance. 16. Zimbabwean politics contributed to the fragmentation of the Zimbabwean community in the UK, and constrained the flow of information: many described how they had been afraid of meeting other Zimbabweans at first, how they feared the reaches of the Zimbabwean intelligence services and preferred to keep themselves to themselves. It was also widely believed that the Home Office paid Zimbabwean informers to inform on others trying to work without papers. 17. Others helped friends into work by allowing them to use their identity. Some Zimbabwean employers running care agencies complained of how they had to be vigilant, and guard against giving one person a job who seemed legitimate, only to find the new employee had sent a sister or mother to work in their stead. (interviews with employers: 71 and 76). This can put other employees in a difficult position: one nurse described turning up for a shift in a dementia home expecting to work with a fellow carer she had known for some considerable time, only to find a new person claiming the carer's identity, who looked nothing like the person she was supposed to be and also clearly had no experience in care. (interview 59). 18. The alternative would be to try to produce the necessary evidence through false documents, or assuming a false identity. 19. Other means of bonding workers include confiscating passports; some colleges have linked employment agencies, such that they send their ‘students’ to work while claiming to be organising a student visa. 20. The majority of those interviewed were in private rented accommodation; two who had asylum claims accepted were in council housing; some dependents of better-established migrants were not responsible for paying rent. 21. This makes an interesting contrast with the literature on recruitment and retention problems in care, which emphasises unfavourable comparisons between care work and other service-sector jobs (Eborall and Garmeson 2001). It seems that migrants make different calculations. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJoann McGregor JoAnn McGregor is Lecturer in the Department of Geography at University College London