This article focuses on alcohol consumption among the migrant workers living in the dormitories in the Pilsen region, Czech Republic, to understand different notions of personhood in the changing and uncertain environment of multinational industrial companies. The authors combined garbological analysis of waste with interaction with the inhabitants of two dormitories to account for potential bias in exploring a sensitive topic such as alcohol consumption. They argue that drinking provides an arena for becoming a person embedded in social relations, acting and experiencing the world in a way that contrasts with the neoliberal emphasis on individuality and flexibility. It is a strategy that pursues stability and mutuality in uncertain times. Also, drinking helps to temporarily escape inequality and dissatisfaction with the living conditions of those who became doomed to the symbolic bottom of the social hierarchy.
This paper is based on two years of research taking advantage of participant observation and interviews with the organizers as well as visitors of the non-monetary zone in the Pilsen region, Czech Republic. The research reveals that despite the effort to formalize this informal activity, tension between formal and informal conceptualization seems to be an obstruction.
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