Living on the Margins ─ Undocumented migrants in a global city

As debates over immigration policy rage in the United States and around the globe, Living on the Margins offers profound insight into the working lives of undocumented migrants themselves. Focusing on London-based migrants and their employers, Alice Bloch and Sonia McKay expose the contradictions in policy and interactions among class, immigration hierarchies, and gender that operate within the ethnic enclave economy, marginalizing and criminalizing these migrants while promoting exploitative labor markets. But the authors also offer hope, revealing how migrants can be active agents in shaping their lives within the constraints of their undocumented status. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, this book places migrant research in a global context, providing theoretical, policy, and empirical analyses that travel across borders.

Alice Bloch is professor of sociology at the University of Manchester. She is coauthor of Sans Papiers: The Social and Economic Lives of Young Undocumented Migrants in the UK and Race, Multiculture and Social Policy. Sonia McKay is professor of European sociolegal studies at the University of the West of England. She is coauthor of Undocumented Workers’ Transitions.