Builders, bodies and bifurcations: How London construction workers ‘learn to labour’

Abstract

This article examines how the ideas about working-class culture presented in Paul Willis’s classic monograph (1977) Learning to Labour apply or do not apply to the data generated by an ethnographic analysis of a London construction site that I conducted in 2003/4. While Learning to Labour had significant relevance to understanding the class-bound masculine cultures of the construction workers, because building work has a pre-industrial history and a post-industrial contemporary, the claim that working-class masculinity is driven predominately by the features of industrial work life is found wanting. Rather than being bound exclusively to industrial work, the exigencies of working-class-bound masculinity could be found in the builders’ problematic and attenuated relationships with the modern state and its legal and moral injunctions. Such relationships to the modern state illuminate why fundamental features of working-class masculine culture are reproduced in a post-industrial global London by both migrant and more indigenous workers, and thus also illustrate part of the reason why class and ethnic inequality persist in the contemporary UK.

Ethnographic Research in the Construction Industry: A Critical Review

“…Ethnographic work provided insights on complex social phenomenon such as protests (Teo & Loosemore, 2014) and compensation cultures (Oswald et al, 2019a); into the complexities associated with the implementation of new technology (Scholtenhuis et al, 2016); as well as insights into social classes (e.g. Thiel, 2012) and practices (Mäki & Kerosuo, 2015). The ethnographic approaches in the 57 studies are discussed below having been split into three categories: 'longer-term', 'shorter-term' and 'alternate' ethnographic approaches.…”

“…Regardless of the method adopted, however, ethnographies inevitably bring the researcher 'closer to the action' in terms of their involvement with practice. Recent construction ethnographies have resulted in researchers being involved in everything from protests (see Teo & Loosemore, 2014) to drinking in bars with workers (see, Thiel, 2012) as part of their research approach. Researchers have been exposed to unexpected findings, such as multinational workforces 'creating their own language' to communicate (see Tutt et al, 2013a); and the development of informal reward systems (known as 'Vegas Time'), where workers could covertly do as they pleased, after finishing production-pressured tasks (see Oswald et al, 2019).…”

Longing for “Normal” Post‐Fordism: Cape Verdean Labor‐Power on a Lisbon Periphery in Crisis

“…On the upside, for Cape Verdean labor immigrants like Djon, subcontracting outfits have become vital sources of employment. Cape Verdean subcontractors are able to draw upon workers from a vast network of compatriots (Thiel :416), thus providing fellow immigrants some flexibility in an otherwise unfavorable job market. It also helps Cape Verdeans to bypass some of the labor‐market difficulties they encounter: discrimination, un‐ and under‐employment, and “competition” from other immigrants from Brazil and Eastern Europe (Batalha :35).…”

“…As elsewhere, these are the sectors that have traditionally incorporated new immigrants in Portugal, such as the arrival of Brazilians and “Ukrainians” in the early 2000s . Both Lurdes's and Taís's experiences reflect the tendency for Cape Verdean women to work as cleaners which, unfortunately, has meant that they have experienced little socioeconomic mobility in Portugal (Oliveira :74–75; Weeks :610; Thiel :416).…”

The cultural politics of wages

“…Erlich and Grabelsky (2005) note that the seasonal character and spatial immobility of the construction process especially lends itself to the use of migrant labour, as lower labour costs cannot generally be achieved by moving the production process across borders but by capitalising on cheaper segments of labour in situ (cited in Buckley 2014). Thiel (2013) too recounts the squalid conditions in which London's building workers worked and the nature of non-contractual, no-questionsasked nature of the industry.…”