Furthermore the experiences o f the workers emphasised how ethnic clustering does not necessarily mean cohesiveness or favouritism among a national group, nor does it necessarily
facilitate union organising as some of the trade unionists implied. Ethnic homogeneity in the workplace (or at department level) can in fact sustain mechanisms o f self-control and disciplining among the employees o f the same nationality. Across the internal occupational hierarchies existing within hotels or in catering services, a common national background can on the contrary foster exploitative practices among workers. A telling example was provided by a Portuguese housekeeper describing the dynamics between the ‘new Eastern Europeans’ in her hotel:
... I think these people should be looked after because they are not aware of their rights, they do not even know how they come into this country...through people from their country who are actually using them in a w ay.. .They are been told: ‘you do as I say otherwise I kick you outr And this is actually what it is happening in the hotel ‘cause we have this horrible person in our department, the assistant, and she is Romanian...Romania is not a country with a very good reputation, you know, and she is this kind o f person... she brought friends of friends (to work in the hotel). And she is employing other Romanians, she does what she wants with them! I do not know what kind o f power she has got on these people (...) they do not speak English, Italian, French nor Spanish... (Arianna, female, white other, Portugal- Angola, 28, years in London, in-house, housekeeper)
The housekeeper’s account critically casts light on the complex relationships between migrants from the same country and the way in which power dynamics between them impact on the labour process and are used to reinforce hierarchies at work. By emphasising how Romanian supervisors were able to bring in co-nationals through a chain of ‘friends o f friends’ this account signals how the use of ethnic networks appears still to be central to the process o f recruitment within hotels. However, the woman also illustrates how national clustering within workplaces can play an important role, in terms of exploiting internal hierarchies and lines o f command between co nationals using other types o f pressure. In the case illustrated, because o f the workers’ ‘lack of knowledge’ of their own rights at work, their poor English and their consequent isolation, the Romanian supervisor is able to exert a special power over her co-nationals on the basis of a specific dependency, making them work hard under the threat o f dismissal.
3.3.7 *Second class’ whites? The specificity o f the migration status
Indeed there is a particular reason why Romanian workers find themselves treated by supervisors as more disposable that other migrant workers:
She is using them I don’t know what their conditions o f work are, if they are illegal or not, I think they can work with a contract. ‘Cause we have some self-employed people, there are at
least three girls and some Bulgarians (...) And many of them have been told ‘if you do not do what I say tomorrow you do not have a jo b’ (Arianna, female, white other, Portugal/Angola, 28 years in London, in-house, housekeeper)
The respondent refers here to the ‘exceptional status’ of the two nationalities of workers from the so-called ‘A2 countries’. Since accession in 2007, workers from Romania and Bulgaria are in fact officially barred from working in the UK (until the barriers to free market mobility are completely opened for all) unless they can prove they are ‘self-employed’ or else work in a restricted number o f sectors where there are extreme shortages (i.e. agriculture and food processing). It becomes clear how the uncertain migration status of workers from these East European countries means a relationship o f submissive dependency on their co-nationals who are already in the country and who have achieved a relatively more stable position in terms of employment and migration status.
It is possible to interpret this phenomenon as an instance o f the ‘multiple constructions of whiteness’ that characterised the last two centuries o f the history o f labour migration in Britain (McDowell 2008b). A parallel emerges between the current divisions between white Eastern Europeans and the situation in post-war Britain where the Government preferred ‘European Volunteer Workers’ from the Baltic States to those from other European countries. With the exclusion of Romanians and Bulgarians, McDowell argues that nowadays we are witnessing a ‘rhetoric of racialised national stereotypes that distinguishes between ‘bad’ Bulgarians and Romanians (...) and ‘good’ hard working Others’ (ibid. 59). The fact that Polish workers themselves were eventually included in the group o f ‘privileged workers’ (who could benefit from free access to the UK labour market) did not exclude the parallel widespread labelling of them as ‘the scourge of the local working class’ (ibid. 60). These reflections are reminiscent of Brah’s consideration about the ‘plurality o f racisms’ operating among peoples, beyond simplistic and dichotomised visions (Brah 1996).
It seems therefore that the EU workers have themselves internalised to a certain extent the same stereotypes attached to the A2 migrants. Similarly to the Brazilian maid (who differentiated Brazilians as ‘more diplomatic’), the Portuguese housekeeper draws a series o f assumptions about those countries’ ‘bad reputation’, naturalising the Romanians and Bulgarians’ ignorance of their rights, their vulnerability and submission to authoritarian supervisors. At the same time though, by uncovering the relationships o f dependency among workers from the same national group in the
workplace, the influence o f the current regime o f migration regulation becomes strikingly apparent. This, in combination with a certain use o f ethnic networks, appears to be employed not only as a means o f smoothing and securing recruitment, but also extending and ‘externalising’ the management and disciplining o f labour in the workplace to the internal power dynamics among migrants. This is achieved also on the basis o f their mobility differentials. In other words, it is their relatively more precarious migration status that provides the basis for this form o f intra-ethnic exploitation. Overall the new forms o f division among the workforce envisaged by trade unionists in this specific sector were ultimately directly shaped by recent changes in UK legislation.
3.3.8 The intersection o f racial stereotypes and migration regulation: managed migration and