Precarity Amongst Women Migrant Nightworkers in Ireland

PRECNIGHTS is an ambitious anthropological project on labour migration and precarity, contributing with novel theory on differential inclusion of the essential, yet invisible women migrant nightworkers (WMN) in Ireland.

Through an innovative interdisciplinary and ethnographic approach, the research will impact scholarly debates in migration, and will inform key Irish and European stakeholders on migrant workers rights.

To reach these aims, PRECNIGHTS objectives are: 1) Unpack how are WMN expected to perform their gender in nightwork; 2) Explore factors that affect WMNs responses to invisibility and precarity; 3) Examine how management practices and work culture impact WMNs understanding and crafting of their self-presentations; and 4) Unpack the structural invisibilisation and precarisation of WMN.

PRECNIGHTS aims to make visible WMN through intersectional methodology that not only examines precarity, migration, gender and nightwork, but also focuses on how each of these four dimensions magnifies the lived experiences of the others; and, further, through ground-breaking, digital, and nocturnal ethnography that captures night experiences.

Together, these enable an inclusive analysis of the lack of power and privilege and the forms of oppression and inequality faced by WMN.

PRECNIGHTS, thus, uniquely contributes to scholarly efforts and policy work dedicated to understanding the contemporary European labour migration regime, which produces conditions of marginality in urban settings, not just in Ireland, but also in other EU contexts.

PRECNIGHTS will be hosted by ISS21, University College Cork and will progress under Dr Caitriona Ni Laoires vital supervision, as her background and expertise in qualitative multi-modal research and socio-spatial dynamics of inclusion/exclusion are at PRECNIGHTS core.