TY - JOUR
T1 - Be our guest/worker
T2 - reciprocal dependency and expressions of hospitality in Ni-Vanuatu overseas labour migration
AU - Smith, Rachel
N1 - This research was funded by an ESRC-UK scholarship. I am very grateful to three anonymous reviewers,supervisors Karen Sykes, Keir Martin, and Madeleine Reeves, and collaborators on the ESRC-funded‘Domestic Moral Economy’ project, especially Chris Gregory, and for comments at various events, especiallyfrom Chris Ballard, Sarah Green, Margaret Jolly, Katie Smith, and Rupert Stasch.
PY - 2019/6/29
Y1 - 2019/6/29
N2 - Whilst there has been renewed interest in the development potential of temporary migration programmes, such schemes have long been criticized for creating conditions for exploitation and fostering dependence. In this article, which is based on a case study of Ni-Vanuatu seasonal workers employed in New Zealand's horticultural industry, I show how workers and employers alike actively cultivate and maintain relations of reciprocal dependence and often describe their relation in familial terms of kinship and hospitality. Nevertheless, workers often feel estranged both in the Marxian sense of being subordinated to a regime of time-discipline, and in the intersubjective sense of feeling disrespected or treated unkindly. I show how attention to the ‘non-contractual element’ in the work contract, including expressions of hospitality, can contribute to anthropological debates surrounding work, migration, and dependence, and to interdisciplinary understandings of the justice of labour migration.
AB - Whilst there has been renewed interest in the development potential of temporary migration programmes, such schemes have long been criticized for creating conditions for exploitation and fostering dependence. In this article, which is based on a case study of Ni-Vanuatu seasonal workers employed in New Zealand's horticultural industry, I show how workers and employers alike actively cultivate and maintain relations of reciprocal dependence and often describe their relation in familial terms of kinship and hospitality. Nevertheless, workers often feel estranged both in the Marxian sense of being subordinated to a regime of time-discipline, and in the intersubjective sense of feeling disrespected or treated unkindly. I show how attention to the ‘non-contractual element’ in the work contract, including expressions of hospitality, can contribute to anthropological debates surrounding work, migration, and dependence, and to interdisciplinary understandings of the justice of labour migration.
U2 - 10.1111/1467-9655.13029
DO - 10.1111/1467-9655.13029
M3 - Article
SN - 1359-0987
VL - 25
SP - 349
EP - 367
JO - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
JF - Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
IS - 2
ER -