This paper explores the emergence of a new ‘migrant division of labour’ in London. In contrast to a vision of ‘professionalization’, it shows that London's labour market has been characterized by processes of occupational polarization and that a disproportionate number of London's low‐paid jobs are now filled by foreign‐born workers. Drawing on original survey data, the paper explores the pay and conditions of London's low‐paid migrant workers and develops a framework for understanding the emergence of a new migrant division of labour in London. In particular, the paper stresses the role of the British state in shaping this divide. The paper concludes that the emergence of such a divide in London necessitates a re‐conceptualization of the place of migrant workers in the ‘global city’ and of the processes shaping global city labour markets, and outlines what this new division of labour might mean for politics and policy in London.

This article examines the means by which low-paid migrant workers survive in a rapidly changing and increasingly unequal labour market. In a departure from the coping strategies literature, it is argued that the difficulties migrant workers face in the London labour market reduces their ability to 'strategize'. Instead, workers adopt a range of 'tactics' that enable them to 'get by', if only just, on a day-to-day basis. The article explores these tactics with reference to the connections between different workers' experiences of the workplace, home and community, and demonstrates the role of national, ethnic and gender relations in shaping migrant workers' experiences of the London labour market and of the city more widely. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd/London School of Economics 2007.

This article is located in the maelstrom of debate about immigration and employment in the contemporary economy. The article presents original analysis of data from the Labour Force Survey and a workplace case-study in the cleaning sector to highlight growing employer dependence on a very diverse pool of foreign-born labour. The article explains such dependency by drawing on interview material collected from employers, employers' associations, community organizations and policymakers. In sum, we argue that London's Migrant Division of Labour (MDL) is a product of the semi-autonomous actions taken by employers, workers and government in the particular context of London. Understanding the MDL thus needs to encompass employer demand, migrants' 'dual frame of reference' and limited access to benefits, as well as employers' preference for foreign-born workers over 'native' labour supply.The state is also argued to play a critical role in this employment, determining the nature and terms of immigration, the accessibility and levels of benefits, and employment regulation. London's MDL is shown to intersect with, and in some cases overturn, existing patterns of labour market segmentation on the basis of human capital (class), ethnicity and gender.

This paper examines the nature and paradoxes of the relationship between urbanization and gender-based violence, especially violence against women. It highlights how such violence varies according to geographic scale as well as a range of other causal and contextual processes in cities of the global South. The discussion highlights that while the underlying causes of genderbased violence rooted in patriarchal relations are ubiquitous across place, certain "triggers" or "risks" can lead to variations between urban and rural areas. However, it also argues that the existing data on gender-based violence makes it extremely difficult to make any accurate comparison between cities and the countryside and therefore it is more helpful to focus on the relationships between urbanization and gender-based violence. On the one hand, cities provide women with greater opportunities to cope with violence more effectively in relation to tolerance, access to economic resources and institutional support. Yet on the other hand, social relations can be more fragmented, which can lead to greater incidence of violence as can the pressures of urban living, such as poverty, engagement in certain types of occupation, poor quality living conditions and the physical configuration of urban areas. Ultimately, cities themselves do not generate gender-based violence, and opportunities for reducing it can be enhanced in urban areas.

The impact of migration on gender identities, norms and conventions has been predominantly understood from the perspective of female migrants. Far less attention has been paid to the potential that migration entails for the negotiation and reconstruction of male identities. Drawing on sixty-seven in-depth interviews with male migrants employed in low-paid work in London, this paper explores the reworking of male identities at different stages of 'the migration project', focusing particularly upon the reasons extended for migration and how these are shaped by gender ideologies in home countries and negotiation of life and work in London. The paper also draws attention to ways in which these re-negotiations are themselves cross-cut by ethnic, racial and class differences, so constructing a more nuanced picture of mobile men and male identities.

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Contributing to debates around the relationships between precarity, mobilities and migration, this paper examines the nature of precarity among onward Latin American (OLA) migrants as they have moved transnationally to multiple destinations from their homelands to southern Europe and onwards to London across different time periods. Drawing on primary research with over 400 OLAs, the discussion highlights how precarity maps onto onward migration trajectories in fractal rather than linear ways. In moving beyond a continuum approach to labour exploitation, the paper develops the concept of "onward precarity" to capture how migrants negotiate intersecting vulnerabilities in holistic spatio-temporal ways as they move through different structural contexts across the world from origin, through transition to their final destination country over time. These negotiations are underpinned by multiple agentic tactics that revolve around resilience and reworking strategies as onward migrants traverse wider structures of disadvantage in situ and through mobility in different places.Resumen: El presente art ıculo contribuye a entender la relaci on entre la precariedad, las movilidades y la migraci on, en la medida que examina la naturaleza de la precariedad de los reemigrantes latinoamericanos (OLAs, por sus siglas en ingl es) que se trasladaron transnacionalmente desde sus pa ıses de origen, hacia m ultiples destinos el sur de Europa y m as adelante a Londres. Con base en datos primarios recabados a partir de una encuesta con 400 OLAs, se observa c omo la precariedad se ve reflejada en las trayectorias de reemigraci on en forma fractal en lugar de lineal. M as que entender la explotaci on laboral desde la continuidad, el documento desarrolla el concepto de "precariedad progresiva" para explicar c omo los migrantes negocian sus diversas vulnerabilidades desde una perspectiva hol ıstica espaciotemporal, a medida que se mueven a trav es de diferentes contextos estructurales desde su origen, pasando por el pa ıs de tr ansito hasta el destino final. Estas negociaciones se sostienen con base a m ultiples t acticas que giran en torno a la resiliencia y otras estrategias de cambio, al tiempo que los reemigrantes atraviesan condiciones de desventaja in situ cada vez m as severas, fruto de su movilidad en diferentes lugares.