Transnational Contract Work and the Remaking of Class among Polish Workers in Construction and Shipyards: Between Collective Subjugation and Stratified Empowerment

Abstract

In late capitalism, class is increasingly made on the move, not in static locations, as different forms of mobility resonate with the making of class in different ways. Poles are the leading European nation who move abroad. However, what the transnationalization of class means for the Polish workforce in the context of diversified employment and mobility regimes has remained underexplored to date. In this article transnational mobility is seen as enacted under the employment umbrella of transnational subcontractors and staffing agencies for short-term contracts abroad. The author focuses on Poles who work in the construction industry and shipyards and explores how transnational contract work conditions workers’class relations and experiences, with the aim of grasping the collective and individual experience of working and living “on a contract” and how this affects their situation in Poland. The article shows that what in most research appears as a working-class mobility populated by low-skilled and vulnerable Polish migrants emerges on the ground as far more heterogeneous and dynamic, marked by a common transnational subjugation as well as inner class hierarchies and antagonism. The argumentation draws on a multi-sited fieldwork conducted in Finland, Denmark, Norway and Poland in 2014–2017.