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Monday, 27 October 2014

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs in Wales

Migrant workers and migrant entrepreneurs: changing established/outsider relations across society and space?

John Lever and Paul Milbourne, Space and Polity, 2014 Vol. 18, No. 3, 255–268

Abstract: Drawing on Elias and Scotson’s theory of established/outsider relations, in this paper we argue that migrants can be outsiders in one spatial context and established in another simultaneously. Our empirical focus is the situations and experiences of migrant workers from Central and Eastern Europe in four towns across Wales. While their position as outsiders is reinforced in the occupational spaces of meat-processing factories, outside the workplace a small but growing number of migrants are engaging in entrepreneurial activities that create new spaces of cultural diversity. We argue that this is having a wider affective impact on established/outsider relations.

Keywords: established/ outsider relations; figurational sociology; migrant entrepreneurs; migrant workers; place; space