Wage Theft and the Contours of Accumulation

Burnett, Jon; Chebe, Fidelis

Abstract

This article examines the theft of migrant workers’ wages in England by their employers, drawing from original accounts and testimonies of a sample of workers employed between 2018 and 2023. It builds on and establishes new conceptual understandings of wage theft by examining it as a violent form of accumulation, with a range of logics and functions including those which are connected to labour processes and the management of labour forces. In making this argument, this article situates the theft of migrant workers’ wages – in this context at least – at the apex of at least three convergent dynamics: namely, the contours of immigration control and attacks on migrants’ rights, a reworking and undermining of regulatory structures relating to labour protections, and ongoing forms of labour market restructuring’. As such, it suggests that these dynamics are structural; and furthermore, at a point where each of these policy trajectories are being aggressively pursued, they are intensifying. In dominant narratives wage theft is frequently depicted as something carried out by ‘rogue’ employers, at the margins of labour markets. But in contrast, this article suggests it must be understood as a structurally-situated component of contemporary political economy. Indeed, it is a core contention of the analysis that follows that movements to resist and tackle wage theft must acknowledge these broader connections and the broader political economy of which they are a part.

Citation

Burnett, J., & Chebe, F. (2024). Wage Theft and the Contours of Accumulation. Justice, power and resistance, 7(1), 39-59. https://doi.org/10.1332/26352338Y2024D000000009

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 31, 2024
• Online Publication Date: Feb 19, 2024
• Publication Date: Mar 1, 2024
• Deposit Date: Feb 3, 2024
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 20, 2025
• Journal: Justice, Power and Resistance
• Electronic ISSN: 2635-2338
• Publisher: Bristol University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 7
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 39-59
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1332/26352338Y2024D000000009
• Keywords: Wage theft; Immigration; Regulation; Accumulation; Violence; Political economy
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/4536923