Extra-ordinary:

Abstract

This chapter draws on research conducted with migrant workers and charity advisers during the Covid-19 pandemic, to explore the extra-ordinariness of a world without work. Focused on London, the chapter shows how migrants who found themselves plunged into unemployment by the pandemic – and excluded from the government's wage-centric aid package – came to rely upon charity advisers for information and care. The chapter argues that on one level, the work of charity was one of bureaucratic and technological translation, as advisers needed to make migrants legible to the state, before they could access any state support. On another level however, the work of charity was also an attempt to build hope and community around the shared experience of (im)mobility outside the wage.