Abstract
This article examines how precarious migrant workers build solidarity through multiple identifications beyond traditional class-based understandings. Based on interviews with 113 participants across three sectors in Denmark, we explore how migrant workers’ solidarity is shaped by both internal group dynamics and external boundary making. We identify two key forces affecting worker solidarity: ‘solidarity with’, where workers prioritise personal and familial identities over class; and ‘solidarity against’, marked by employer dependency and unclear boundaries against external entities. Our findings demonstrate that migrants’ identifications emerge through multifaceted processes in transnational settings, influenced by family obligations, survival strategies and structural dependencies. This understanding advances contemporary debates on migration, solidarity, class identification and collective action.
Introduction
The global landscape of labour has been significantly impacted by an increase in migration patterns (Castles et al., 2014). Migrants tend to ‘socially declass’ (Rye, 2019) and find jobs in certain sectors with low wages (Krings, 2021) and limited collective bargaining and social protection (Martínez Lucio and MacKenzie, 2017). This has led authors to describe ‘dual’ labour markets with distinct positions for migrants and nationals (Piore, 1979). Authors have suggested that migrants are rarely fully incorporated into society but remain in a transitional ‘betwixt-and-between’ (Lever and Milbourne, 2017: 318), causing diverse and unstable class identities. However, little is known about how this labour market duality affects class identifications and solidarity dynamics at an individual level. Therefore, calls have been made for research that explores migrants’ multiple transnational class orientations (Rye, 2019) and includes dimensions such as gender and ethnicity (Però, 2014).
Although migrant workers are often situated precisely at the intersection of precarious employment and proletarian class identities, there exists a widespread misconception that they lack solidarity because of the lack of class-based struggle against socio-economic inequality (as critically examined by Però, 2014). This article challenges that notion by exploring the nuanced ways in which migrants experience class-based solidarity through multiple identifications.
We contribute to filling a crucial knowledge gap by offering an in-depth case study of how migrant workers in non-standard work in Denmark establish group identification and solidarity. We unearth a discrepancy between their structural position as ‘workers’ and their subjective perceptions of identification, leading us to question how internal and external factors shape the formation of class identities and solidarity dynamics among low-wage migrant workers. To better understand the processual dynamics of group identification, we offer a conceptual framework differentiating between ‘solidarity with’ and ‘against’, of intertwined processes of group identification and differentiation, which helps to explain how class-based solidarity does or does not appear. Our framework illustrates that group formation has both vital internal and external dynamics, as collective identities emerge both in solidarity with fellow workers and against the antagonistic ‘Other’.
By drawing attention to how migrants’ identifications are bound to group formation and collective identities with and against other groups, we suggest that worker solidarity must be theorised in conjunction with identifications related to group dynamics beyond class. Drawing upon gendered, transnational and survivalist identifications, migrants build identifications that can complicate the emergence of a collective workers’ ‘we’. Migrants’ orientations towards other collectives such as family and kin hamper potential internal group formation (solidarity with), whereas dependent employer relationships complicate external group formation (solidarity against).
This recognition calls for a more fluent understanding of solidarity that goes beyond work and labour and encompasses subjective dimensions of class. This subjective dimension is important because it reveals the complex, fluid nature of migrants’ class experiences across transnational contexts. We uncover a significant disconnect between migrants’ structural position as workers and their self-identification, often as ‘survivalists’ rather than part of a working class. This disconnect helps explain why traditional class-based solidarity may not emerge among migrant workers. Subjective class identifications also intersect with gendered narratives, family roles and national backgrounds, shaping migrants’ relationships to work, colleagues and potential for collective action. While the central aim of this article is to contribute to our understanding of migrant workers’ class affiliations, our findings apply on a broader level as our conceptual framework adds to an understanding of group identification as multifaceted, shaped through both internal and external dynamics.
Literature Review: Class-Based Solidarity and Migrant Workers
Research on class and class-based solidarity has seen a revival as global debates on inequality have resurged in recent years (Friedman and Savage, 2018). Consequently, calls have been made for a reconfiguration of the concept of class in the 21st century to better recognise the interplay between other categorial inequalities such as gender and ethnicity (Però, 2014; Savage, 2020).
Questions about the importance of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ markers of class relate to larger sociological debates on structure and agency, such as Giddens’ (1973: 105) distinction between ‘economic’ and ‘social’ class. Della Porta et al. (2022: 217) criticise classical Marxism for focusing overly on the structural dimensions of identity formation that arise from workers’ place in society. Scholars have long acknowledged that both objective markers of class and subjective experiences of social stratification are important (for instance Morris and Murphy, 1966: 310), since class interests do not follow directly from class positions (Goldthorpe and Marshall, 1992: 385). This was already noted by early Marxist thinker Rosa Luxemburg (2022), who argued that class consciousness develops in collective action.
Moving forward, scholars have examined how the working class engage in their own, active processes of identity formation (Savage, 2000; Thompson, 1964) rather than simply by their place in the productive process (Parkin, 2000). This begs the question of with whom workers should show solidarity, as a collective identification must conceptually exist before any group solidarity can emerge (Lysgaard, 1972). Although working-class solidarity is a key basis of labour militancy (Fantasia, 1989), broader understandings of solidarity do exist (Tassinari and Maccarrone, 2020). A key insight is that solidarity may be socially constructed and does not exist a priori (Doellgast et al., 2018: 88; Fantasia, 1989).
Scholars have noted that worker solidarity has traditionally implied that workers need to set aside their other identities while pursuing a homogeneous, collective identity to successfully engage in collective institutions such as trade unions (Alberti et al., 2013: 4135). A key concern here is that a universalistic approach that glosses migrant workers as simply ‘workers’ may miss particularities that require union accommodation – such as migrant workers’ multiple vulnerabilities in terms of socio-economic disadvantages, lack of language skills and cultural background (Martínez Lucio et al., 2017; Refslund, 2021). Acknowledging these challenges, scholars are increasingly studying migrant positionalities through intersected, yet differentiated experiences with inequality (Alberti et al., 2013) and by relating those experiences to their class identifications (Però, 2014). This leads to an increased awareness of the multiple challenges tied to organising migrant workers, compounding internal group tensions and difficulties in building what we term ‘solidarity with’.
While our study focuses on low-wage migrant workers in non-standard work, labour migration occurs across multiple tiers in the global economy. These tiers are interconnected, with the experiences of low-wage workers shaped by broader economic structures and the presence of higher-skilled migrant labour. However, these connections fall outside the scope of this study focusing on migrant workers’ individual experiences with transnational group identification. Migration is an inherent transnational process (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013: 184) that often involves a ‘status paradox’ in which labour migration accompanies a loss of status or class exchange for economic capital when ‘socially declassing’ (Nieswand, 2014; Rye, 2019). The ‘inconsistent’ class identities among low-wage migrants present significant challenges in forming stable collective identities and encourage a more dynamic and context-sensitive approach to studying group formation among migrant workers (Però, 2014; Rye, 2019). We respond to this call, analysing how absences of coherent class identities affect class-based solidarity.
Conceptual Framework: Solidarity with or against
Group formation is essential to any kind of organising (Kelly, 1998). Earlier scholars have noted that trade unions have historically concentrated on the twin themes of building class unity among workers and mobilising against antagonists such as employers (Hyman, 2001; Thompson, 1964). We take this duality as a key and somewhat neglected insight and conceptualise solidaric group formation as composed of dual and interconnected processes of building collective identities, ‘solidarity with’ and ‘solidarity against’, or internal cohesion and external opposition. Our conceptualisation of ‘solidarity with’ and ’solidarity against’ is not meant to propose individualism as the basis for collective action, but rather to explore how collective identities and actions emerge from shared personal experiences within constraining structural contexts. We argue that these individual-level processes are crucial for understanding how worker solidarity is built, maintained or eroded. This conceptual framework (Table 1) draws attention to the importance of group dynamics in collective identity formation and suggests a broadening of traditional class-based solidarity.
Conceptual framework: Solidarity with or against.
‘Solidarity with’ represents the aspect of collective identity that is forged through shared experiences, identities and goals among members of a group. This form of solidarity emphasises the collective ‘we’ and fosters a sense of in-group belonging, mutual obligation and shared identifications as ‘workers’.
‘Solidarity against’ refers to an antagonistic process of identification as ‘us’ against ‘them’, emerging as a response to external antagonistic or oppressive forces. This form of solidarity is developed in opposition to an ‘Other’ – employers, capitalists or the broader, perceived unjust economic system – galvanising members of a group to unite against a common adversary. As we show later, migrants’ vulnerable labour market position and dependent relationships with employers can complicate, or even undermine, the emergence of workers’ solidarity.
These two processes are deeply interconnected as solidaric identity is formed not only by people recognising shared experiences but also with reference to antagonists and conflict. Boundary maintenance is central to group identity as groups are defined not only by who they are but also crucially by who they are not (Barth, 1969). Our framework stresses the relational aspect of group formation, as political and social entities are created in oppositional relation to other groups (Cohen, 1985). Boundaries create internal cohesion (Laclau, 2005: 70), and antagonism is therefore constitutive of political groups (Mouffe, 2005), with newer research also stressing the antagonistic elements of solidarity itself (Morgan and Pulignano, 2020). Our framework of ‘solidarity with’ and ‘solidarity against’ recognises that while personal grievances can spark collective action, they exist within broader structural contexts. The personalisation of grievances we observe should not be seen as neglecting workers’ status, but rather as a manifestation of how structural vulnerabilities are experienced and articulated at an individual level, and how these individual experiences can aggregate into collective narratives (see also Borello, 2025) or what Laclau (2005) terms ‘chains of equivalence’. By focusing on these personal narratives, we aim to illuminate how structural vulnerabilities are experienced, understood and potentially contested at the individual level.
The Empirical Context: Precarious Migrant Workers in Denmark
The Danish labour model minimises state intervention by relying on collective agreements between employer associations and trade unions (Andersen and Mailand, 2005). However, low union density among non-standard workers and migrant workers challenges the effectiveness of these agreements (Refslund, 2021), and migrant workers often have significantly lower wages compared with Danish nationals (Arnholtz and Hansen, 2012).
This article situates migrant workers’ experiences in ‘non-standard work’, characterised by precariousness, irregular hours, lack of job security and often uncertain legal status for migrants. Our study focuses on three sectors: agriculture, construction and transport (specifically platform delivery services), each highlighting challenges in non-standard work. Common among the selected sectors and migrant groups is the element of temporariness.
Migrants’ citizenship status has important implications on their labour market position and mobility trajectories (Anderson, 2010). The European Union (EU) citizens in the study benefited from the EU’s free mobility whereas the non-EU citizens’ visa was often tied to work in a specific sector or company (Spanger and Andersen, 2023). This led to both circular migration over multiple years for some whereas others resorted to short-term employment for a few months. Consequently, migrant workers’ mobility was not only limited by the national or European migration legislation but also by the employer who could terminate their contracts or housing at their discretion. This caused general insecurity of putting not only the migrants’ job but also their residency ‘in jeopardy’ (Anderson, 2010: 309–310). Most migrants in the study were main providers of families in the country of origin, and others were indebted to the subcontractors, migrant broker agencies, smugglers or traffickers who had facilitated the migration (O’Connell Davidson, 2013). Job maintenance was therefore of utmost importance.
Non-standard work is increasing in Denmark, with migrant workers notably over-represented (Ilsøe and Larsen, 2020). Danish unions are actively working to organise migrant workers and foster grassroots initiatives (Arnholtz and Refslund, 2019; Hau and Savage, 2023). This context highlights the need for studies like the present one to understand solidarity dynamics among migrant workers in non-standard jobs. In this context, citizenship status and nationality impact migrants’ ability to develop solidarity with or against, as we demonstrate in our analysis.
Methods
Qualitative studies among migrant workers are challenging (Friberg, 2016) due to their segregated labour market position (Felbo-Kolding et al., 2019) and precarious employment situation (Anderson, 2010), which causes mistrust and vulnerability (Refslund, 2019). Faced with these challenges, we follow recent studies stressing methodological pluralism (Lamont and Swidler, 2014) through an ethnographic field work with extended participant observation and a large body of interviews with multiple actors and stakeholders (Friberg, 2016).
Our data consist of 60 semi-structured interviews with a total of 113 participants, conducted between February 2021 and May 2023 (Table 2). Of these, 35 were individual and group interviews with 88 migrant workers, while 25 interviews were with union officials, organisers, civil society actors, grassroots activists and employers, many of whom also had migrant backgrounds. We also conducted 14 instances of participant observation, focusing on migrants at their workplace, social events organised by trade unions and during demonstrations and strikes. In agriculture, interviews were conducted during piece-rate work, and for transport and platform delivery workers, conversations occurred during their deliveries. In the construction sector, because of safety and access restrictions, direct workplace observations were not feasible. Instead, we visited a migrant ‘village’ (container city) near a construction site and conducted observations at a union office following a major migrant strike. These varied settings allowed for in situ interviews and deep field immersion (Almond and Connolly, 2020).
Overview of interviews and participant observations.
Migrant interviewees were predominantly EU citizens but included non-EU citizens as consistent with the migrant demographics in Denmark. Faced with these vastly different conditions tied to their nationality, our sampling strategy only included non-settled migrants who were either commuters or seasonal workers (Berntsen and Lillie, 2016) to emphasise the transnational elements of building class solidarity. We did not differentiate between migrants’ legal status or length of stay, as the overarching interest of the research is to understand migrants’ solidaric identifications in contexts of precarious work rather than particularities tied to their legal status.
As a direct consequence of the sector choice characterised by demanding physical labour, most interviewees were male, and their narratives centred around survivalism and masculinity. Other authors have pointed towards similar narratives of survivalism and gendered sacrifice among female migrant workers in the domestic work and care sectors (Jiang and Korczynski, 2016; Rydzik and Anitha, 2020). However, these are beyond the scope of this article as male migrant workers’ narratives comprise the cornerstone of the analysis.
Interviews were conducted in the interviewees’ native language using a translator, in English, or in Danish depending on interviewee preference. Interviews lasted an average of 60 minutes, were recorded with the interviewees’ informed consent, anonymised and fully transcribed for thematic coding in NVivo 14 based on our analytical framework, focusing on elements of collectivism, individualism, solidarity, class and mobility. In accordance with Danish law, no ethics committee clearance was necessary as the corresponding author fulfilled the ethics requirement through a code of conduct course.
Findings
Temporary Social Declassing and Multiple Class Identities
Migrant workers’ group identification derives from complex social and structural conditions. Coming from a middle-class family in the mountains near Bogotá, delivery courier Paulo accepted a temporary ‘inferior’ class position as a deliberate strategy: When I went there [to Denmark], I had to suffer the really long shifts and, you know, get a sense of how much effort people need to pay to achieve things . . . So, I was at the bottom of the bottom of the hierarchy you know. I was the one cleaning the floor, cutting things, all those tasks no one wanted to make – those were mine. (Paulo, platform delivery worker, Colombia)
Paulo’s statement nuances Nieswand’s (2014) migration status paradox, showing how migrants view temporary social declassing as a tool for future advancement. This reaffirms Rye’s (2019) observation that migrants are not necessarily the most deprived in their home countries, and even the migrants in the present study with relatively high socio-economic status still declassed socially in their new context. Ivan, a Ukrainian worker with a university agricultural degree was offered half the wages of his Danish co-workers at a dairy farm. Despite this inequality, the wages earned in Denmark enabled him to return home to Ukraine and obtain a new, upward class affiliation: ‘I came home with €10,000, but some people can work for ten years and not get it – the same money . . . I’m from a low contingent [of society]. But not at the moment! [laughs]’ (Ivan, agricultural worker, Ukraine).
This temporary social declassing allowed for a new class position and possibilities when migrants returned home but appears to negatively affect migrants’ working-class identification. Classical expressions of labour engagement were severely limited throughout our study. However, while our interviewees often framed their experiences in terms of individual status changes, these narratives are inextricably linked to broader class dynamics and wider economic structures that disincentivise and disadvantage workers, reproducing vulnerability and fostering alienation. We understand this ‘temporary social declassing’ as more than a shift in status, being a complex (re)negotiation of class position in a transnational context. Temporality is key factor as well, as one union organiser explained: Some [migrants] are only here for a short time and make good money in relation to the country they came from. So, the relevance of an agreement that also secures the workers of the future, it may be difficult to see – it is difficult to see. I totally understand that. (Lasse, transport union organiser, Denmark)
As the interviewed migrants considered their work to be temporary and saw Denmark as a transient home their desire to invest time and resources in labour organisation was limited. It was only in times of accidents or labour disputes that they started thinking seriously about organised labour and its benefits. Prior to such obstacles they did not articulate visions of a united front against employers: They [the migrants] start to speak [to the union] only if they have a problem. A problem they cannot do anything about. Maybe the boss is saying, ‘you can live with it, or you can go home’. Then maybe they are coming to us, and they are speaking to us. But until then, they just want to be low, get their salaries, send it to the families, and that’s it. (Florin, union organiser, Romania)
Migrants’ social declassing rather complicates traditional notions of class because it introduces great fluidity in migrants’ socio-economic roles (Rye, 2019). Importantly, migrants themselves did not express their declassing as lack of agency. In contrast, finding themselves in a temporarily deprived social position was articulated precisely as an act of agency: I said: I made the choice of coming here. I need to face it. That’s the choice I made… I thought of myself as someone who needded to pay [a personal cost] to achieve his aim. So the way I thought of myself was not as someone, not as an eduacted, upper-middle-class Columbina guy. I personally didn’t care much about working in whatever… So, when you think of classes as groups that are antagonistic and that are capitalist, you think of the world in terms of capitalists and the proletariat, and that’s like, for real? That is a very poor analysis! There are many, many more greys in between! (Paulo, platform delivery worker, Columbia)
This active manipulation of class contrasts with an understanding of class as determined by economic conditions and social structures, highlighting a tension between ‘objective’, socio-economic indicators of class and migrants’ subjective class identification. This tension and fluidity in migrant class solidarity leads us to consider how the migrants’ willingness to declass is entwined with their own understanding of class affiliation and the role of other, non-class-based forms of solidarity in this process. We consider the role of those with whom migrants build solidaric ties and how these social processes shape labour migrants’ group identifications. We argue that understanding these subjective dimensions is crucial for developing a nuanced analysis of non-standard migrant workers’ experiences and their potential for solidarity in an increasingly globalised labour market. This approach does not seek to challenge a more structure-focused analysis but to supplement with low-wage migrants’ own articulations and identifications.
Solidarity with: Internal Group Dynamics
Family, Survival and Masculinity
Around 300 Polish workers have migrated to work on the Femern underwater tunnel between Denmark and Germany, Denmark’s largest infrastructure project. Coming to the huge construction site by the sea dotted with cranes and construction workers in orange vests, we set up interviews near the migrant ‘container village’ in an adjacent union office building. Here, we met migrant workers who articulated a strong urge to live through their dissatisfactory working conditions as an instrumental aim for a better future life despite substandard housing coupled with wages below those of the Danish workforce. Romanian Ludovic, a father of three with a five-year-old grandson, valued family time but felt forced to work abroad to support them, acknowledging wearily: ‘you cannot have everything you want in life’. For Ludovic, being able to reduce his family’s economic deprivation involved sacrificing cherished family time to alleviate his family’s economic struggles to provide them with a better life. Others, like forestry worker Lukasz, attempted to bring their families with them but were unsuccessful: We used to live together in Denmark 16 years ago, me, my wife, and Carlo and Pablo, my two sons. I worked at a farm in Skelskør [small town]. We did not have many friends here and I only spoke Polish. And one of my two boys is sick, he has a handicap. So, it was difficult. We would go to doctors and treatment and my wife was always alone. I worked long hours; it was during the harvest. Then we talk and my son says: ‘Dad, we are going back home. I have no friends here, I do not understand the language. We are going back to grandma and grandpa.’ And then they left. (Lukasz, agricultural worker, Poland)
Although 16 years had passed, Lukasz was still working abroad and circulated between Denmark and Poland every fourth week. Lukasz, like most other migrants in our study, still perceived Poland as his ‘home’ and said he would retire there. Most interviewees were the main providers of their families who lived off their remittances, binding the acceptance of poor working conditions and social declassing to family obligations and dependency. Their strong focus on family needs exacerbated the migrants’ job dependency, and the interviewed migrants were less concerned about their solidaric ties to co-workers in the host country compared with their familial solidarity. They further perceived collective organising as a risk to their families: ‘Some people have families, kids and things . . . Imagine it is your only job and someone like me do something wrong. And tomorrow we can’t put food on the table for your family’ (Yosif, platform delivery worker, Bulgaria). This focus on family provision at the expense of personal needs and workplace solidarity shows how wider gender norms affect internal group formation. Valentin, a Romanian platform union organiser with firsthand experience as a migrant worker, reflected on how most of his peers had a masculine survivalist mentality: Obviously, they think they are workers; they identify with the working class. But on a psychological level, they identify as a ‘survivalist’: ‘I have to go through this hard period of time to make some extra money. Four months a year, I will go through hell. I will survive because I am a man and I have to.’ (Valentin, platform union organiser, Romania, emphasis added)
The emphasis on personal strength and endurance coupled with a gendered survivalist mentality led to a lack of traditional group cohesion among migrant workers. Their experiences were framed through a lens of personal struggle and gendered achievement, creating a sense of isolation and disconnection from co-workers with whom they shared similar occupational roles but did not see as part of their personal survival narrative or family unit.
In line with Gallo and Scinzi’s (2016) findings that class and gender are reshaped through migrant labour, our study reveals the nuanced ways in which gendered roles as providers redefine notions of group solidarity. This reaffirms earlier research on how migration can amplify hypermasculine behaviours, especially in environments characterised by competition and risk (Urdea, 2020). Among our interviewees, the masculinity narrative compounded migrants’ intersecting vulnerabilities as tied to temporary social declassing and family dependency in the country of destination. This fostered an urge to survive and live it through alone. The migration process itself is shaped by relational practices of masculinity, as migrant men may seek to reclaim aspects of their masculinity in contexts where they feel powerless (Pande, 2017). This further reinforces individualism over class-based solidarity as traditional masculinity roles that emphasise individual strength and self-reliance detract from the sense of mutual dependence and shared struggle that forms the basis of in-group identification.
Overall, our findings point towards a link between gendered narratives and class identifications, where a focus on family leads male migrant workers to conceptualise solidarity differently from traditional labour movements. This leads us to consider the wider role of social relations in shaping solidarity dynamics in the country of destination, as this presents another hindrance to the formation of in-group solidarity.
Mistrust among Migrants
In interviews, migrants exhibited a general mistrust of both co-nationals and other migrants due to their present and previous experiences with precarity and corruption. Migrants from post-Soviet countries, characterised by significant corruption and distrust in authorities, often displayed heightened mistrust towards individuals of the same nationality while abroad. Our findings thus suggest that migrants’ national experiences affect solidarity with and group identification. Clearly, ethnic networks abroad are complex, and other authors have pointed towards the importance of ethnic solidarity networks among displaced diaspora communities in ensuring support and labour market entry (Keles et al., 2022). In our case study, however, the stratification between various ethnic groups often (although not always) failed to spark increased co-ethnic solidarity, but rather, encouraged individualisation and inter-ethnic competition while abroad. Alexandru, a platform delivery worker from Romania, explained this through the example of a fellow Romanian employer who had promised him a legal contract and documents but failed to provide them upon arrival. This caused Alexandru to perform illegal work in Denmark unwillingly: I actually don’t want to deal with Romanians any more. It is only because I had no other choice. You know, we are just 2000 kilometres away from our home, and we do not stick together . . . If he [another Romanian] offers me a job, he wants me to give something, some money or something like that. He is not helping me because I need help . . . they [other Romanians] can betray you, and they will betray you here. (Alexandru, platform delivery worker, Romania)
Similarly, Yosif, from Bulgaria, was offered an illegal account in a platform economy company by a Chinese migrant worker to be able to work in Denmark. However, when the service stopped functioning, he threatened to report Yosif to the police if he did not continue to pay him for the service. Ethnic hierarchies in the country of destination seem to maintain – and in some cases even encourage – inequalities and mistrust of fellow migrants (Ryan et al., 2008), thus hindering solidarity while abroad. This suppression appears as an outcome of the fundamental precarity migrants were subject to, fostering a need to ensure one’s own survival by exploiting others. Or, as Petre, a platform delivery worker from Romania, put it: ‘stabbing someone to be higher’.
These empirical examples set a scene where mistrust among migrants could hinder the establishment of new solidaric ties when migrating, further complicated by the precarious context. In acknowledging the role of co-ethnic mistrust in impeding solidarity among workers, we are not implying that all co-ethnic relationships are inherently problematic. Importantly, several migrants did establish meaningful solidaric ties to co-workers, for instance through digital migrant networks of coping, which we have devoted attention to elsewhere (Hau and Borello, 2023). Instead, our intent is to illustrate the complexity of group identification in migrant networks, which comprise various actors interacting in both reciprocal and asymmetrical ways, as detailed in several studies (Berntsen and Lillie, 2016; Gold, 2005; Krissman, 2005; Ryan et al., 2008). These studies highlight the complexity and underline that not all co-ethnic connections function in the same manner, but that these interactions of survival and mistrust inform internal group dynamics that can hinder traditional class-based solidarity.
Solidarity against: External Boundary Making
Employers
Challenges with class-based solidarity were further aggravated by the relationship between migrants and their employers. Migrants described their dependence on their employers in economic, structural and social terms. Economically, they relied on their employers to support their families’ livelihoods in their home countries. Structurally, employers were often responsible for providing legal documents, including contracts and necessary paperwork, some requiring the employer’s signature for obtaining legal identification and medical documents through the Danish Agency of International Recruitment and Integration. Socially, employers frequently served as the migrants’ only source of information about life in Denmark.
At a strawberry farm in rural Zealand, we met 12 Romanian piece-rate workers. These workers, isolated from urban centres, had no identification documents, medical papers or Danish bank accounts, but sent all their earnings as remittances to their families back in Romania. Their existence in Denmark was one of hand-to-mouth: their employer provided them with just enough cash each week to meet their basic living needs, leaving them without direct access to their own earnings in the bank. Each week, the employer would drive to the bank in town to withdraw what he termed ‘food-money’, underscoring the complete control he had over their financial autonomy and their deep dependence on him for basic needs.
Beyond these dependencies, migrants frequently reported that employers used violence and threats to keep them in a vulnerable position. A union organiser shared an incident in which a foreman at a construction site exerted control over 10 migrant workers by closely monitoring them and coercively ensuring that they withdrew large portions of their salaries in cash, which they were then forced to hand over to him. The situation escalated when the union intervened by filing a lawsuit against the company. In retaliation, the employer resorted to ominously warning the workers that he would ‘murder them with an axe’ unless they reinstated him as their foreman. Faced with this dire threat, the workers felt compelled to comply.
Paradoxically, one would assume that such precarious circumstances would precisely lead to antagonistic mobilising against employers. However, migrant workers’ deep social and structural dependence on employers, combined with their lack of relation to other Danish individuals and sometimes even other migrants, severely hampered any emergence of antagonism or boundary making. Union organisers confirmed these challenges with employer dependency complicating the establishment of antagonistic frontiers: We tell them: ‘Listen, you have to get paid for your, for your sick days. This is Denmark!’ And some people are like, ‘Oh, but I don’t want to do this to my boss.’ It’s about loyalty. Some of them [the employers] are masters of psychology. They target their new employees. And they really find the weak. (Valentin, union organiser and former precarious migrant worker, Romania)
The stratification among workers is also significantly influenced by nationality, as the citizenship status of migrants influences their job dependency. This is particularly true for those who are indebted to migrant broker agencies or subcontractors (O’Connell Davidson, 2013): I gave money for, for this practice about €3000 EUR. I was 18. It was almost all of our money in Ukraine, and I couldn’t go back with €200 home, you know, and say: ‘Oh, mom, I lost – I lost everything. And now I need your help.’ No! No way. There was no way. (Ivan, agricultural worker, Ukraine)
This employer dependency foregrounds the risk accompanied by undertaking labour-oriented action, as migrants risk not only losing their job but also their residency when joining the union or resisting collectively through other means (Anderson, 2010). These difficulties, in turn, lead to migrants’ experience of temporary social declassing and lead them to emphasise family and survival over workplace solidarity and labour resistance. By highlighting the role of employer-enforced segregation, and by considering both previous home-country experiences as well as the already-established solidaric ties in the country of origin, we argue that these factors combined severely complicate the processes of both internal and external group formation, as migrant workers do not establish either solidarity with co-workers or solidarity against employers.
Discussion
Previous studies have highlighted the unions’ tendency to undertake a universalistic approach towards labour migrants by thinking of them as workers rather than migrants, thus overlooking the particularities and vulnerabilities tied to labour migration (Alberti et al., 2013). Our interviews with union actors both confirm and challenge this stance. The largest Danish trade union 3F (United Confederation of Workers) focuses on organising migrants through various outreach activities to educate and safeguard decent working conditions for foreign workers and has allocated substantial time and resources to this task (Refslund, 2021). However, although unionists are increasingly aware of the special vulnerabilities of migrant workers, there is a tendency to focus exclusively on class solidarity in this outreach work, foregrounding an understanding of a workers’ collective fighting for labour rights. Because there is little solidarity to appeal to, these efforts often fail to resonate with the migrants’ identifications as lone survivalists fighting to sustain their families.
The unionist approach, therefore, showcases the classical objective understanding of a working class coming together as a ‘solidarity against’ the employer or workplace but overlooking the important aspects of establishing a ‘solidarity with’ before any antagonism can be funnelled into collective action. We posit that solidarity is a two-fold process where it is necessary to build group ties within but also to state claims and building antagonism against adversaries to maintain group boundaries. Both processes are important factors in determining group belonging and group boundaries, and the resulting opportunity spaces for collective action.
The understanding we foreground in this article considers the transnational nature of a growing workforce, which complicates classical class-based solidarity dynamics, and suggests an understanding of class that considers transnational and temporary class identifications that stem from labour migration. We further show that issues tied to dependency relationships with both families and employers shape migrants’ possibilities, and hence, their group formation and collective orientations. Importantly, migrants’ temporary acceptance of social declassing may be a strategic manoeuvre as they build capacity to upward class mobility, potentially changing their possibilities and incentives for collective action in the future. Acknowledging these circumstances brings us closer to understanding why migrant workers decide to, at least temporarily, accept precarity rather than confront it through traditional class-based collective resistance.
Conclusion
This study has revealed key insights into the internal and external dynamics of how migrant workers in non-standard work relate to issues of class and group identification. By drawing attention to the role of family ties, gendered narratives, national backgrounds, mistrust and employer dependencies, we unpack how the intersections of multiple inequalities compound the difficulties of building class-based solidarity along both internal and external lines. We introduce a new conceptual prism through which it becomes possible to explore migrants’ identifications as tied group formation and solidarity dynamics – solidarity with and against – which inform group dynamics and identification.
Our findings challenge the prevailing notion in the literature that migrant workers lack solidarity. Instead, we see a reconfiguration of solidarity in response to the unique structural challenges faced by migrant workers. We first find that migrants’ identifications are predominantly rooted in family affiliations. Temporary social declassing emerges as a strategic manoeuvre, primarily undertaken to facilitate upward class mobility upon migrants’ return to their home country. This pursuit is not purely individualistic, but is a collective family enterprise, invariably wrapped in gendered expectations. However, the temporality of these conditions along with gendered expectations complicates in-group identification, indicating an understudied link between gender dynamics, migration and solidarity, as also purported by Però (2014). Migrants’ ‘survivalist’ and ‘strong man’ narratives reinforce conventional notions of masculinity, creating an implicit sense of duty and responsibility for the migrant man to provide and elevate his family’s social standing. This diminishes class-based solidarity in the host country as migrants mainly identify as survivalists and prioritise family solidarity over occupational solidarity. Similarly, mistrust towards co-nationals and other migrant ethnicities obstructs potential alliances among migrant workers and hampers the formation of class-based solidarity. Lastly, the intricate role of employer dependency adds another layer to this already complex stratification, as migrants are precluded from developing strong antagonistic solidarity against due to their social and structural dependencies on employers.
While this study provides insights into the solidarity dynamics of low-wage migrant workers, we acknowledge that it does not fully capture the complexity of labour migration across all tiers of the global economy, or how these tiers interrelate in creating class identifications. However, the framework offered in this article provides a conceptual prism for analysing the dynamics of group formation, which can be applied across contexts. The challenges that migrants in this study face underscore the necessity for multifaceted approaches that incorporate these dynamics in policy formulation and suggest that we might need a fresh look at the intersections of various dimensions of class as well as how collective engagement emerges based on class dynamics. Future research should continue to explore the intricate interplay of class, gender and nationality among migrant communities and how these factors intersect to influence their experiences, both abroad and upon returning home. This study demonstrates that rather than lacking solidarity, migrant workers do engage in complex forms of collective identification and mutual support. However, these forms of solidarity often operate outside traditional class-based frameworks. The insights gleaned from this study can serve as a foundation for a more holistic approach to organising migrant workers by drawing attention to the social phenomenon of class-based solidarity as something that exists not only within but also beyond the workplace in intersection with other identity formations.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
We are grateful for the feedback received at a seminar at the University of Manchester on the article with Miguel Martinez Lucio, Matthew Johnson, Stefania Marino, Gabriella Alberti and Davìde Pèro. We also thank our colleagues Bjarke Refslund, Mathias Heerup, Georg Barthel, Aleksandra Markovic and Alberte Alsø Dokkedal for commenting on previous versions of this article, as well as the editors and anonymous reviewers of Sociology, whose constructive feedback improved the manuscript substantially.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article: this research was funded by the Independent Research Council Denmark, case number: 0167-00020B.
Ethics statement
Not applicable. In accordance with Danish law, the corresponding author fulfilled a code of conduct course.
