Colonising strategies of employment agencies and their effects on A8 labour migration to the UK

The paper is exploring colonising strategies of employment agencies and their effects on labour migration from post-socialist EU Accession 8 countries to the UK. Using historical and macro socio-economic context as a point of departure it aims to uncover how postcolonial narrative that was surrounding EU enlargement eastwards has been appropriated by employment agencies that are colonising A8 countries and specialising for providing A8 labour to the UK. Further it sets to explore how this colonization and its narrative affect Polish and Slovenian workers on the UK labour market. Findings show that A8 labour is branded as possesing superior work ethics, as being cost-efficient, flexible, traditional, legal, second class and white labour. This racialised ‘price-tag’ further also has gender and age dimensions and comes with deskillng and devaluation of workers. The paper exposes how colonising practices on transnational fields construct a specific class culture of A8 workers that are activelly outsourced directly from A8 countries also because of their lack of knowlegde of the UK labour market. Due to false self-colonial imagination of labour and living standards within the UK A8 workers can easily fall for exaggerated promises about their professional development, career prospects or pay. Racialised and uninformed migrant labour thus serves as a handy commodity for providing peculiar services, lowering their costs and increasing profits. By taking into account spatial and temporal dimensions this paper exposes on-going colonial practices that are part of contemporary capitalism and are affecting and lowering the standards of all workers. This awareness can form the basis for transnational solidarity and collective action amongst diverse groups of workers that in fact suffer from similar structural forms of oppression and precarious existence.