SBRC research seminar: Pushed to the edge – a study of self-employed Ukrainian migrants in the UK construction sector

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Time: 1.00pm - 2.00pm
Venue: Kingston Business School building, Room 322, Kingston Hill campus, Kingston Hill, Kingston upon Thames, Surrey KT2 7LB
Price: free
Speaker(s): Dr Natalia Vershinina (De Montfort University, Leicester)

In this article the nature of self-employment of illegal and legal Ukrainian migrants operating in the construction sector in UK is examined. The key aim of this article is to contribute to the discussion on the unexpected ways in which this new migrant community incorporates their self-employment activity, by explaining the patterns of illegality, intertwined with informality. The approach in this article contrasts the prevailing view in the literature of the illegal migrant worker as "victim or villain", criticised by Anderson and Ruhs (2010). The sample of twenty illegal and legal Ukrainian self-employed workers was studied using mixed embeddedness approach for analysing self-employment among ethnic migrants. The findings indicate that these illegal migrants operate in the labour market in ways similar to non-migrant regular self-employed individuals, and see their illegality as a transition rather than final state.

About the speaker

Dr Natalia Vershinina is a principal lecturer at the Department of Strategic Management and Marketing, Leicester Business School, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK. She has co-authored the market-leading 'Management' textbook with R. Daft and M. Kendrick. Her main teaching and research area is entrepreneurship and small firms with particular interest in ethnic minority entrepreneurship, family business and effect of gender on women's enterprise.

For further information about this event:

Contact: Hang Do
Email: h.do@kingston.ac.uk