Mitigating the Effects of Precarity: Brazilian Migrant Workers and Place-Making in Rural Ireland

Rodrigues, Pilar Luz (2022) Mitigating the Effects of Precarity: Brazilian Migrant Workers and Place-Making in Rural Ireland. Doctoral thesis, SETU Waterford.

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Abstract

This research aimed to investigate the everyday lived experiences of Brazilian migrant workers with precarity in rural Ireland. The study sought to understand how different factors contributed to shaping their overall experience as migrants. The research had one main objective, to examine the social conditions of precarity affecting Brazilian migrant workers, and to analyse how they mitigate the challenges of living precarious lives. The qualitative study incorporated participant observation and semi-structured interviews with 21 participants carried out over a period of 18 months of intermittent fieldwork. Fieldwork took place predominantly in the small rural town of Gort as well as the towns of Roscommon, Ennis, and Waterford city. The study relied on an adaptation of Abdelmalek Sayad’s double absence theory (2004), incorporating place and placemaking theory (Agnew 2005; Tuan 1977; Relph 1976; Gieryn 2000) to the former as a means to expand its explanatory power. Place theory was employed in the study to grasp the Brazilian migrant workers’ response to precarity. The study demonstrated that the State, its immigration policies, and the status which they produce create and compound vulnerabilities amongst the Brazilian migrant population in rural Ireland. It also illustrated the costs experienced by Brazilian migrant workers as a result of living in precarity. Through an analysis of findings centred on work, the costs of migrant precarity, community, and home, this doctoral thesis has made an original contribution to knowledge in the field of migration studies, by providing an in-depth understanding of the social conditions prevailing among Brazilian migrant workers living in precarity in rural Ireland and the strategies employed by them to mitigate the negative effects of migration and precarity.

Item Type: Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords: Precarity, migrant workers, Ireland
Departments or Groups: *NONE OF THESE*
Divisions: School of Humanities > Department of Applied Arts
Depositing User: Derek Langford
Date Deposited: 29 May 2023 14:25
Last Modified: 29 May 2023 14:25
URI: https://repository.wit.ie/id/eprint/7707

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