Precarious Masculinities: Migrant Working Men’s Masculinities as Self-Exploitation in a Mediterranean Restaurant in Glasgow

Abstract

Drawing on a covert ethnography of a Mediterranean restaurant in Glasgow, this article analyses how practices characteristic of hegemonic masculinity are incorporated by male migrant workers in the process of crafting labour identities. Building on Connell’s framework of hegemonic masculinity, the researchers found that performances of masculinity operated in a way that, while allowing subjects to feel some degree of power, also ultimately reinforced the individualising pressures promoted by the labour process. It is therefore argued that hegemonic masculinity is critical in providing an avenue through which experiences of exploitation are naturalised by precarious labour workforces.