Alan Davis
Email: alan.davis@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
BSc Hons (First) with Diploma in Geography, The Open University, 2002.
MSc Research in Human Geography (Distinction), University of Leicester, 2008.
Chinese labour migration to the UK.
Supervisors: Neil Coe and Kevin Ward.
Research interests
International migration, Migrant social networks, Social and economic change in China, Informal labour markets.
My research investigates the experience and strategies of recent low-skilled migrants from mainland China to the UK, with a focus on migrants living and working in the West Midlands. In particular the research will investigate how far migrants are able to develop and use interpersonal social networks in order to improve their position in relation to British society and labour markets and to overcome the multiple disadvantages which they face.
This is a relatively new migrant group, distinct in regional origin, language, history and culture from the established ethnic Chinese population in the UK, and lacking well developed support networks, language skills and knowledge of UK labour markets. They pay high fees to migration agents, putting themselves and their families in debt, in order to work for a few years in the UK. A lack of legal immigration status, high barriers to regularisation and increased enforcement activity by immigration authorities, further render them vulnerable to exploitation in low paid, informal employment. There has been concern with the extent of the informal labour market which provides cheap flexible labour to the UK economy and with the size of the undocumented migrant population which has been recruited to do Britain’s dangerous, dirty and low-paid work. Recent Chinese migrants are faced with a choice between being exploited in the established ‘co-ethnic’ restaurant sector or in the wider informal economy.
Thus migrants find themselves at the centre of a complex of interlocking sets of social relations and institutional arrangements which tend to make them vulnerable to exploitation. However, migrants are not merely passive victims of this process. Rather, they are (more or less) knowledgeable agents acting within structural constraints which simultaneously provide opportunities for mobility, who are able to use their knowledge of the rules inherent in these structures, and through their action to reproduce or modify them.
This wave of immigration which started in the mid-1990s may now be diminishing largely as a result of improving economic conditions at home and economic downturn in Europe. Significant numbers of low-skilled Chinese migrants have gained residence status in the UK through the asylum system and have become a new established community. The research makes use of oral history interviews with recent migrants which focus on the period after their departure from China and so provide a means of accessing the collective experience of the group over the migration period. A further series of interviews with representatives of community and voluntary organisations, enforcement agencies, churches and employers will serve to contextualise these accounts. Data from the interviews will be used to develop an understanding of the motivations, resources and strategies of the group from their own perspective and within the broader societal context.