Between a Promise and a Salary: Student-Migrant-Workers’ Experiences of Precarious Labour Markets

Abstract

This article examines the experiences of non-EU/EEA student-migrants orienting in precarious labour markets in Finland. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with working student-migrants holding a temporary legal status, the article examines the incidence of unpaid work within a variety of contractual settings and sectors. The findings suggest that exploitation with regard to the subjective capacity to produce is facilitated through the imposition of unpaid work hours on legally constrained migrants in precarious employment. The findings contribute to the sociological analysis of the increasingly fragmented figures of labour as well as to the study of unpaid work as a driver of precarisation.