5 research outputs found
Chameleon brokers : A translocal take on migration industries in the Thai-Swedish wild berry business
No full textMigrant brokers constitute a substantial node in the industries that underpin contemporary global migration processes, including seasonal labour migrants in agri-food businesses. This article adds a translocal perspective to the role of migrant brokers, while emphasising the multi-sited embeddedness of brokers in sending and receiving countries, and their role in sustaining transnational migration flows. The example of the Swedish wild berry industry shows how two groups of translocal brokers operate in multi-sited space, first, Thai women brokers residing in rural Sweden, and second, local brokers, residing in rural Thailand. This article emphasises how translocal brokers are giving migration industries access to multi-sited embeddedness, both at the site of recruitment in Thai villages and at the site of work in Sweden. The translocal embeddedness is noticed in how moral economies and trust are at play in recruitment processes, and how moral economies are then transferred across space to the site of work. Also, it accentuates how translocal brokers are main subjects, in how their biographical histories are creating translocal relations across space. Lastly, we show how spatial divisions of labour are creating social hierarchies among workers, where the brokers themselves incorporate shifting, ‘chameleon’ roles in multi-sited space. The analysis brings the moral complexity of brokers to the surface, while showing how the social relations of their ‘moral economies’ are commodified within profit-seeking migration industries.
Thai local brokers in the Swedish berry industry : Roles and positions across time and space
No full textOver the last decade, each year 2500 - 6000 Thai go to Sweden to work as berry pickers during the berry season via a regulated system of temporary work permits. Bangkok-based staffing agencies rely on the networks of local brokers to recruit workers in Thailand’s more peripheral northeastern Isan region, as part of the larger migration industry in Thailand. During the berry season, these local brokers also travel to Sweden and are part of the division of labour. Next to picking berries, their jobs can be cook, camp leader, and driver. Key concerns raised in relation to this seasonal work are precarity and vulnerability to exploitation, resulting from to the need to pay high fees to staffing agencies and a piece-rate wage-system. This thesis aims to analyze roles and positions across time and space of local Thai brokers. It does so by examining how they have come to occupy their current positions, and what their roles are in the recruitment process in Thailand and during the during the berry season in Sweden. Moreover, it investigates the interlinkages between these two roles, and how differences in remuneration and payments of fees shape precarity at the micro-scale. Based on the analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in the Kaeng Khro district in Thailand in March 2019, this study suggests that the local brokers are industry veterans. Moreover, is suggests a large degree of variation in size and scope of local brokerage. During the berry season in Sweden, the local brokers tend to occupy positions above the regular berry pickers. Moreover, it is suggested that there is a differentiated precarity within the group of brokers, resulting from differences in the payment of wages and the need to pay fees to staffing agencies
Healthcare platform companies and (dis-)embedding strategies : restructuring the Swedish public primary care
No full textWhile research on the platform economy is thriving, platform companies operating in the public sphere remain understudied. The present article contributes to narrow this research gap, by analysing the emergence of healthcare platform companies (HPCs, hereafter) in the Swedish public healthcare sector. HPCs provide app-based consultations, matching healthcare professionals with patients. These are relatively new private for-profit actors that are restructuring the geography of the Swedish public primary care. The paper deploys the notion of (dis-)embeddedness to analyse HPCs' expansion strategies, foregrounding two interrelated aspects. First, how HPCs territorially (dis-)embed in/from Regions to maximize reimbursement from public finances, using a parallel system of primary care financing by providing app-based consultations at the national scale. Second, how HPCs simultaneously embed in transnational networks of speculative capital, raising investments to offset losses and fund further expansion. Drawing on critical platform and digital data studies, this article examines how the speculative valorization of data, extracted via app-based service provision and central to valuation processes of platform companies, can account for HPCs' rapid expansion despite sustained losses. HPCs' data extraction practices push the frontier of commodification in the public primary care beyond the provision of services, while their expansion strategies further financialization
The Uneven Geographies of Platformised Care : (Re)Shaping Social Reproduction in Sweden
No full textPlatforms mediating care services are increasingly reshaping the geographies of social reproduction, offering care fixes to some, while exacerbating the crisis of care for others. In this paper, we draw on research on healthcare, deliveries and cleaning platforms in Sweden to argue that platforms reinforce and redistribute flows of care privilege and care poverty between the Global North and the Global South, between urban and rural locations, and within cities, thus deepening the uneven geographies of care. These uneven geographies apply to those performing social reproductive work as well. While the working conditions of migrant platform cleaners have clear repercussions for their own social reproduction, other segments, such as healthcare professionals, may experience platform work as a fix to both working conditions and work–life balance. Ultimately, we propose that the political economy of social reproduction unfolds as a spatially uneven process, making life easier for some and harder for others.
