Migrant construction work and theories of urbanization
I’m currently exploring the contemporary role that migrant construction workers play in building cities. Over the past two decades, precarious forms of temporary, foreign labour have become an increasingly prevalent feature of the construction sector in a range of cities across the Global ‘North’ and ‘South’. Drawing on approaches from postcolonial urban scholarship, feminist labour geography and critical urban theory, I have sought to highlight the ways that gender, ethno-nationality, class and citizenship are mobilized and produced through the incorporation of migrant workers in the urbanization process, and to foreground the prevalence of economic insecurity and exploitation among migrants employed in the construction trades
