Invisible migrants: A micro-ethnographic account of bodily exhaustion amongst migrant manual labourers working the graveyard shift at New Spitalfields Market in London

Simple item page
dc.contributor.authorMacarie, Julius-Cezar
dc.date.accessioned2026-10-28T14:33:01Z
dc.date.available2026-10-28T14:33:01Z
dc.date.issued2019-12-16
dc.description.abstractThis article reports data collected during an ethnographic research project conducted in the New Spitalfields wholesale night market in London. It foregrounds and analyses the portraits of two protagonists and triangulates them with data collected in the wider project. This micro analysis reveals that low-skilled workers (loaders, drivers, cleaners, servers) of the night market engage in physical labour tasks to maintain a 24/7 city’s economy appetite round-the-clock. The night workers’ somatic experiences, rhythmic bodily labour that constitutes the workers’ bodily capital, are discussed on the backdrop of challenges that they face while working the “graveyard” shift. The paper relays the workers’ individual characteristics, such as the physical and mental abilities to endure and embody the duress of night-shift work. This paper proposes that bodily exhaustion, alienation, and sleep deprivation are amongst the factors causing precarious migrant night workers to become bioautomatons who are awake and working around the clock.en
dc.description.versionPublished Version
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.authororcidMacarie, Julius-Cezar§0000-0002-0525-9439
dc.identifier.citationMacarie, J-C 2019, 'Invisible migrants : A micro-ethnographic account of bodily exhaustion amongst migrant manual labourers working the graveyard shift at New Spitalfields Market in London', Journal of Health Inequalities, pp. 198-202. https://doi.org/10.5114/jhi.2019.91400
dc.identifier.doi10.5114/jhi.2019.91400
dc.identifier.endpage202
dc.identifier.issn2450-5927
dc.identifier.journaltitleJournal of Health Inequalities
dc.identifier.otherORCID: /0000-0002-0525-9439/work/86769603
dc.identifier.startpage198
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/19522
dc.language.isoen
dc.rights© 2019, Calisia University, Kalisz, Poland.
dc.rights.accessrightsopen access
dc.rights.licensenameAttribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
dc.statusPeer reviewed
dc.subjectBodily exhaustion
dc.subjectSleep despoliation
dc.subjectMigrants
dc.subjectNightshift work
dc.subjectSpitalfields Market
dc.subject[SocietyPoliticsEthics]
dc.titleInvisible migrants: A micro-ethnographic account of bodily exhaustion amongst migrant manual labourers working the graveyard shift at New Spitalfields Market in Londonen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
4._MacQuarie_2019_5_2_Bodily_exhaustion_at_New_Spitafields.pdf
Size:
142.2 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Description:
Published Version
Download
Collections
School of Society, Politics and Ethics