Opening the Black Box of Business: Firm-Led Approach to Studying Cross-Border Labour Migration

The argument this paper puts forward is that current approaches to labour migration black box the firm. Infrastructural approaches showed that intermediaries and industry associations are all part and parcel of the increased outsourcing of migration management. Market sociological approaches surfaced the macrostructures and institutions governing labour migration. Yet, both approaches overlook the firm/business; we still know exceptionally little about the ways in which industry structure and firm business model shape migratory flows as well as worker agency. Drawing on over 170 interviews with migrant workers and managers in electronics manufacturing in Eastern Europe, I will illustrate how -- within transnationally organised circuits of production-- transnational corporations pursue profitability and efficiency by attempting to synchronize the supply of labour with time of production. I refer to this model as ‘just-in-time labour’ and I suggest that firms treat migrant workers according to the logic of just-in-time assembly, that is, attempt to acquire the type of workers needed, at the time needed, and in the quantity needed. Apart from showing how the just-in-time logic is reshaping migration flows into shorter and quicker migration circuits, I will also examine the ways in which the on-demand industry imperative is expediating cross-border mobility of labour. I will show how such mobility is not confined to a single workplace or a single country, but is enacted across the transnational labour market and shaped by workers knowledge about cross-country job search strategies, by work and pay levels in different locations, and by migrants’ networks. Centring these practices is pivotal, I suggest, in order to theorise the ways in which the mobility of labour, in addition to that of capital, is a constituent force in the production of cross-border labour markets.