Hidden Dishes—How Food Gets on to Our Plates: Undocumented Migrants and the Restaurant and Takeaway Sector
Alice Bloch
Sonia McKay
DOI: 10.2190/WR.17.1.e
Abstract
This article suggests that despite the informal nature of employment relationships, in the context of migrant undocumented labour, working arrangements are nevertheless governed by clearly understood and accepted norms, regulating pay and working conditions. Thus in situations where there is an absence of state regulation in the field of employment, social actors nevertheless consent to abide by norms, which guide, control, and regulate proper and acceptable behavior. Thus, within what is referred to as a dual labour market (Piore, 1975, 1979), the parties are not completely free from regulation. The outcome is that businesses employing undocumented migrants acknowledge the terms that should be applied to specific types of work, observing hierarchies and providing opportunities for progression for those without documents and seemingly without the power to insist on the operation of the law. In turn, workers acknowledge the agency that they possess but may not choose to exercise it. The article draws on Gouldner's (1960) concept of the norm of reciprocity, although in a context where it is not dependent on equivalence.
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