Migrant and Precarious Labour in Logistics: Mapping Employment Regimes and Reconnecting Workers Solidarities Along the Global Supply Chain

Recent debates in the sociology of work, organisation and labour relations have attempted to re-centre the ‘place of labour’ in the wider context of increasingly interconnected and fragile global production networks. More recently the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed the centrality of migrant and precarious labour to the resilience of supply chains, while jobs in logistics have acquired new visibility. Scholars looking at changing labour mobilities have meanwhile highlighted the persistence of mobility despite the apparent tightening of migration regulation by states. This panel encourages empirical and theoretical papers that focus on different experiences of migrant and precarious workers across the logistics sector (such as warehousing, transport, ports and platform-based delivery). Given low union density in some sub-sectors, we welcome contributions that look beyond ‘hard’ outcomes of solidarity (e.g. sectoral collective agreements or strikes) and include informal workers’ self-organization and the circulation of repertoires of resistance. We welcome contributions that span the Global South and North and engage with question such as: in what ways are we witnessing the emergence of new labour regimes and solidarities amidst the social and economic shocks that have shaken global supply chains? How have the recent health and geopolitical crises triggering new migratory/refugee movements made more visible the work of low-paid workers involved in key sectors and shaped their organizing practices? How do these dynamics intersect with changing strategies by employers dealing with unprecedented labour shortages, fluctuating markets and governments’ increasingly regimented management of labour migration?