‘Slaves’ Without Coercion? Work-Related Classification Patterns Among Romanian Migrant Workers

Abstract

Tens of thousands of Romanian migrants work in the German construction sector. Their work is often characterized by unpaid wages, long workdays and by the withholding of sick or holiday payments. The risky and exploitative nature of the conditions under which Romanian migrants work on German construction sites is reflected in their negative evaluation of their engagements as “slave labor” by Romanian workers. Starting from such a clearly negative evaluation, the paper asks how Romanian construction workers in Germany classify their work and what role such classifications have within the context of labor exploitation. Based on qualitative interviews with and participant observation among Romanian construction site workers in Germany and in Romania, the article reconstructs four work classifications. Work may be interpreted as the fulfillment of obligations or as necessary for economic revenue; hard work itself can be a symbolic contribution to one’s own sense of identity or it can have the meaning of being part of everyday normalcy. Each of the work classifications offers a different reason to make hard work plausible in the eyes of the workers and employers actively turn such interpretations into a mechanism of vulnerability. Without direct physical coercion, these ideas motivate workers to take on work that they themselves criticize as ‘slave labor.’ The paper concludes by arguing that the recognition of such classifications and their social effects are crucial for an understanding of labor exploitation.