Bodies on the line - experiences of health and safety at work among Polish migrant women working in the UK

This is a CASE PhD in collaboration with the Health and Safety Executive. It interrogates experiences of Polish migrant workers employed in four sectors: care, hospitality, retail and education. I chose these sectors because they yield rich and varied data on those working from home, furloughed, having to physically go out to work and those juggling work and caring responsibilities as well as home schooling. These are also the sectors with a significant number of Polish employees. The focus of my research is how work affects the body both in the physical and mental sense as well as the complex interplay of gender, migration status, and other intersecting identities (e.g., race, ethnicity, class) in shaping workplace experiences and outcomes.
I have conducted 30 qualitative interviews with Polish women working in the UK. My research aims are to explore the different risks to health and safety before, during and after the pandemic, and the attitude and response of employers to them.
This PhD is important because it sheds light on the pressures of juggling work, caring and home-schooling commitments which disproportionately affects migrant women. As such many migrant women are likely to have three careers: that of a migrant, that of a mother and that of an employee (Odden, 2016). Interviewing women also turns attention on the under researched female migrants and present them as independent gendered agents thus rebutting the stereotype of 'trailing wives and mothers' (Cooke, 2001). Scholars of work and embodiment point to the lack of studies which bring the body and work together and analyse the relationship between work and the body. Hassard et al (2000: 2) claim that 'the study of the body has tended to become estranged from the study of work just as analysis of work organization has been abstracted from the body'. Effort has since been made to address these gaps (Wolkowitz, 2006, Tyner, 2019) however more research is needed on the effects of precarious work on female migrant bodies, especially through the lens of Brexit and COVID-19 pandemic and as such they are the two key events which provide context to my research.


References:
Cooke, T. J. (2001) 'Trailing wife' or 'trailing mother'? The effect of parental status on the relationship between family migration and the labor-market participation of married women. Environment and Planning, 33, 419-430.
Hassard, J.R., Holliday, R., Willmott, H. (eds.) (2000) Body and Organization. London: Sage.
Odden, G. (2016) 'They assume dirty kids means happy kids'. Polish female migrants on being a mother in Norway. Miscellanea Anthropologica et Sociologica 2016, 17 (3): 35-49.
Tyner, J. (2019) Dead Labour. Toward a Political Economy of Premature Death. University of Minnesota Press.
Wolkowitz, C. (2006) Bodies at Work. London: Sage.