2026/06/04 by Annabel Ipsen, Jane Collins · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Health Professions · #Migration and Labor Dynamics #Employment and Welfare Studies #Migration, Refugees, and Integration
paper · doi:10.1177/08969205261453898
This article draws together political economic theories of labor market precarity and theories about the role of difference in structuring labor market inequality to develop the concept of vulnerability fix. We argue that employers and the state have co-constructed a complicated set of programs and policies that have institutionalized unfreedom for a significant subsection of the workforce. At the bottom of the labor market, they have created categories of workers for whom the rules are different. By mobilizing these differences, employers are able to exert greater control over workers, hold down wages, and limit workers’ ability to organize. We refer to this strategy as a vulnerability fix . Focusing on unauthorized labor, guestworker visa programs, and refugee labor, we analyze how employers and the state draw on racial, ethnic, and legal hierarchies to attenuate the rights of some workers and how this also creates precarity for those who labor alongside them.