False self‐employment: the case of Ukrainian migrants in London's construction sector

• Published date: 01 January 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/irj.12199
• Date: 01 January 2018

False self-employment: the case of

Ukrainian migrants in London’s

construction sector

Natalia A. Vershinina, Peter Rodgers, Monder Ram,

Nick Theodorakopoulos and Yulia Rodionova

ABSTRACT

This article, presenting qualitative accounts of Ukrainian business owners, highlights

how migrants engage in false self-employment in the UK. Their experiences

problematise notions of legality and binary depictions of migrant workers as ‘victims

or villains’, demonstrating that migrants see their illegal status as a transient stage

before gaining legal status.

1 INTRODUCTION

Whilst migrants have long been recognised as an important source of labour for

global construction markets, their work practices are changing. There have been

concerns that migrant workers exist in a precarious role as a ‘disposable underclass’

with limited prospects for social mobility and integration (Sumption and Somerville,

2010, p. 10). False self-employment (Buckley et al., 2016) amongst migrants is rising

as an increasingly hostile regulatory environment combined with widespread

precarity amongst new arrivals to the UK (Behling and Harvey, 2015; Hopkins and

Dawson, 2016). This is particularly the case in construction, a sector characterised

by high migrant participation and irregular working practices (MacKenzie et al.,

2010; Meardi et al., 2012). Yet the processes by which migrants enact false self-

employment, their experiences and coping strategies, and their ultimate objectives

(or projective agency) remain largely unexplored. We examine the lived experiences

of illegal Ukrainian migrants working in London’s construction sector. As ‘new’

migrants to the UK (Jones et al., 2014), they engage in irregular work practices,

including various forms of false self-employment. We contribute to existing scholarly

attention on how low-waged migrant workers experience the construction sector not only

in the UK but also across Europe (MacKenzie et al., 2010; Meardi et al., 2012) and also

enhance understanding of how vulnerable groups of workers, such as migrants, seek to

negotiate the institutional complexities of UK’s construction sector (Mustchin, 2014).

❒Natalia A. Vershinina, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Monder Ram, Professor of

Entrepreneurship, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, Peter Rodgers, Associate Professor in

Strategy, University of Leicester, School of Business, Leicester, UK, Nick Theodorakopoulos, Professor

of Entrepreneurship Development, Aston University, Birmingham, UK and Yulia Rodionova, The

Russian Presidential Academy of the National Economy and Public Administration. Correspondence

should be addressed to Natalia A. Vershinina, Department of Management, Birmingham

Business School, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham, West Midlands B15 2TT, UK;

email: n.a.vershinina@bham.ac.uk

Industrial Relations Journal 49:1, 2–18

ISSN 0019-8692

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

We view the notion of ‘illegality’as a fluid process rather than as a given and static

end state, thus transcending binary perceptions of illegal migrants as ‘victim or

villain’(Anderson and Ruhs, 2010). By examining the degree to which an individual

engages (or not) in legal labour markets, the article’s empirical findings contribute to

a broader understanding of linkages between notions of illegality and work practices.

Further, by recognising the diversity of these work practices, involving varying

degrees of interaction with legal labour markets, we contribute to a ‘diverse

economies’(Gibson-Graham, 2006) approach to understanding contemporary labour

markets. This decentres the legal work environments and highlights alternative

approaches to understanding the lived experiences of migrant workers within the

UK economy and, moreover, the diverse ways that individuals can be viewed as being

‘self-employed’.

Rather than relying on binary opposition, we view ‘vulnerability’as a useful

conceptual tool to explain the diverse ways that illegal migrant workers navigate

the UK labour market. The findings also highlight how, perhaps unexpectedly, there

are similarities between how illegal migrants and non-migrant regular self-employed

individuals operate in the UK labour markets. Second, rather than the status of

illegality being viewed as a static phenomenon—afixed intended state—the findings

demonstrate that new migrants see their illegal status as a transient stage within their

journey to gaining legal status. We show how different forms of legality and illegality

coexist. A migrant worker may be ‘illegal’according to his or her migration status

whilst simultaneously paying tax as a business owner and employing workers and

thus running a legitimate venture (Webb et al., 2013). Moreover, the findings

demonstrate the heterogeneity in the manifestations of self-employment.

The heterogeneity we report contributes to debates on the ‘socially constructed’

distinctions between social and legal boundaries that fragment the notion of work

into various categories such as ‘legal’and ‘illegal’labour (Hatton, 2015). Whilst

scholars have examined the immense diversity of work practices, nonetheless,

uncritical acceptance of binary distinctions of ‘good or bad’forms of labour

(Kalleberg, 2011) remains (Zatz, 2009). We focus on the interlinkages and boundaries

between categories to illuminate the full range of work practices, particularly within

the small business context. In order to do this, this article explores the following core

research question: to what extent do self-employed Ukrainian migrants working in the

UK construction sector see their illegal status as an end state or more broadly as a

process?

The article is organised as follows. First, we critically assess debates on migration

and the transient state of migrant workers, considering changes to workers’legal

status and its impact on employment. We focus on self-employment, as one of the

possible employment opportunities that is available for such migrants, which to date

has received little coverage. Then the trends in Ukrainian migration are presented,

relating these to studies on illegal business migration and the construction sector

(Behling and Harvey, 2015). The findings from interviews with 20 Ukrainian self-

employed construction workers precede the discussion and conclusions sections of

this article.

2 MIGRATION AND ILLEGAL MIGRANTS

The phenomenon of ‘migrant’is ill defined in the literature. Anderson (2010, p. 301)

does not distinguish between settled ‘immigrants’and temporary ‘migrants’when

3False self-employment of Ukrainian migrants in London’s construction sector

© 2018 Brian Towers (BRITOW) and John Wiley & Sons Ltd