Resource Recovery and Migrant Labour in the EU

European Urban and Regional Studies http://eur.sagepub.com/

Doing the 'dirty work' of the green economy: Resource recovery and migrant labour in the EU Nicky Gregson, Mike Crang, Julie Botticello, Melania Calestani and Anna Krzywoszynska European Urban and Regional Studies published online 30 October 2014 DOI: 10.1177/0969776414554489

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European Urban and Regional Studies 15–­1 Doing the ‘dirty work’ of the green © The Author(s) 2014 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav economy: Resource recovery and DOI: 10.1177/0969776414554489 migrant labour in the EU eur.sagepub.com

Nicky Gregson and Mike Crang Department of Geography, Durham University, UK

Julie Botticello Department of Geography, Environment and Development Studies, University of London, UK

Melania Calestani Primary Care and Population Sciences, University of Southampton, UK

Anna Krzywoszynska Department of Geography, Durham University, UK

Abstract Europe has set out its plans to foster a ‘green economy’, focused around recycling, by 2020. This pan-European recycling economy, it is argued, will have the triple virtues of: first, stopping wastes being ‘dumped’ on poor countries; second, reusing them and thus decoupling economic prosperity from demands on global resources; and third, creating a wave of employment in recycling industries. European resource recovery is represented in academic and practitioner literatures as ‘clean and green’. Underpinned by a technical and physical materialism, it highlights the clean-up of Europe’s waste management and the high-tech character of resource recovery. Analysis shows this representation to mask the cultural and physical associations between recycling work and waste work, and thus to obscure that resource recovery is mostly ‘dirty’ work. Through an empirical analysis of three sectors of resource recovery (‘dry recyclables’, textiles and ships) in Northern member states, we show that resource recovery is a new form of dirty work, located in secondary labour markets and reliant on itinerant and migrant labour, often from accession states. We show therefore that, when wastes stay put within the EU, labour moves to process them. At the micro scale of localities and workplaces, the reluctance of local labour to work in this new sector is shown to connect with embodied knowledge of old manufacturing industries and a sense of spatial injustice. Alongside that, the positioning of migrant workers is shown to rely on stereotypical assumptions that create a hierarchy, connecting reputational qualities of labour with the stigmas of different dirty jobs – a hierarchy upon which those workers at the apex can play.

Corresponding author: Nicky Gregson, Department of Geography, Durham University, Lower Mountjoy, South Road, Durham DHI 3LE, UK. Email: [email protected]

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Keywords EU, labour, municipal waste, recycling, ship recycling, textile recycling

The recovery of secondary materials, or resources, have the added virtue of being located in areas for- for recycling within the European Union (EU) has merly associated with heavy industries (SITA UK, become central in the drive to the greening of 2012: 4). In the EU as a whole, jobs in recycling- European economies. Three related motivations related activities grew from 230,000 to 500,000 underpin this. First, there is an environmental and between 2000 and 2008, at a rate of over 10% per geopolitical driver to decouple economic growth annum (EEA, 2011: 17).1 from the consumption of finite material resources. Foundational to the proximity principle is that Resource recovery within the EU is seen as a means the societies who generate the world’s wastes to sustainable production and as a way of breaking a should be those who bear the responsibility for resource dependence that is argued to be leaving the their management. This principle is encoded in the EU vulnerable to capricious external powers, espe- EU’s Waste Framework Directive, which seeks to cially as demand from non-Western countries for prevent ‘toxic’ waste from being exported across the same resources increases (European Commission the EU’s borders. European waste management is (EC), 2011; European Environment Agency (EEA), further structured by the EU Landfill Directive 2011). Second, current global recycling labour is (1999), which sought to divert materials from land- found largely in the developing world (Alexander fill, and by a raft of sector-specific regulations such and Reno, 2012) and is haunted by the trope of those as for end-of-life vehicles. The Landfill waste workers in the Global South whose labour Directive has boosted recycling rates across the EU breaks up the iconic consumer goods of the digital through the implementation of stepped yearly tar- age or the capital goods of globalisation – mobile gets for member states. Indirectly, it has also phones, computers and merchant ships (Basel extended the reach of ethical consumption for Action Network (BAN), 2002, 2005; ILO, 2004; European consumers, to encompass the discards Greenpeace/FIDH/YPSA, 2005). This figure has that are an effect of consumption (Bulkeley and been central to the global environmental justice Gregson, 2009). ‘Doing the recycling’ has become movement. Circulating images, often of child labour part of a responsible consumption across the EU. It working in environmentally degrading conditions in is normative, habitual and extends care at a distance the Global South, have served to bolster the critique from its traditional focus on workers in the agricul- of the wastefulness of Western consumerism, show- tural and primary manufacturing sectors of the ing that the burden of the world’s waste rests on the Global South (Barnett et al., 2005) to include envi- shoulders, and is felt in the bodies of the poorest of ronmental care for distant lands and, additionally, the poor (Clapp, 2001; cf. Crang, 2010). In response, for distant workers. In this way, European consum- environmental non-governmental organisations ers’ domestic recycling labour is connected to the (ENGOs) pressurised Western states to bring recy- alleviation of environmental degradation in devel- cling operations closer to the homes of Western con- oping countries as well as caring for and about sumers. This ‘proximity principle’ has played a recycling workers in the Global South. The ques- prominent role in European waste policy for the past tion that remains unasked in these developments, twenty years. Third, there is the promise that ele- however, is ‘what kind of work has accompanied vated levels of European resource recovery might the rise of recycling within the EU?’ The academic also boost EU economies, via increasing employ- literature thus far has largely ignored this question. ment in the ‘green economy’. Waste management Much existing research positions recycling under companies, for example, advance claims that, in the the banner of sustainable consumption and exam- UK alone, expanding recycling could create up to ines it through consumers and consumption. The 84,000 jobs in the next decade, and that these might interest is in the recycling habits and practices of

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 Gregson et al. 3 consumers, the willingness of consumers to do the economy: the EU Thematic Strategy on the work of pre-sorting rubbish, and thus in explaining Prevention and Recycling of Waste (Commission of differences in recycling rates between different the European Communities, 2005) and the Roadmap groups (e.g. Barr et al., 2001, 2003; Collins et al., to a Resource Efficient Europe (EC, 2011), both of 2006; Darby and Obara, 2005; McDonald and which set the EU on the course to becoming a ‘recy- Oates, 2003; Tonglet et al., 2004; Wheeler and cling society’ by 2020. In these documents, Glucksmann, 2013). In contrast, environmental European recycling is invariably portrayed as a research positions recycling within the wider frame clean as well as green activity. of municipal waste governance (Bulkeley et al., In this paper we interrogate the representation 2007). Whilst it acknowledges the activities of col- of European resource recovery as clean and green. lection, its focus is more on governing waste and its Our contention is that the emphasis within destination than on the economic effects and kinds European recycling is on governance, which of jobs created. Recent work on the processing of assumes a technical and physical materialism in waste has focused on charting the performative which what matters are technological possibilities effects of governance categories in defining what is of resource recovery and environmental outcomes. waste and what is a product, and on the entangle- A consequence is that little or no attention has been ment of material flows that result where one waste paid to how value is created from paid labour, bleeds into another product (Lepawsky, 2012; which does the work of resource recovery or recy- Lepawsky and Billah, 2011). In so doing it follows cling the collected materials. Not only does this the flows of materials (Gregson et al., 2010a), render these labour processes within the EU invis- rather than accepting an a priori definition of a pro- ible, but that omission also allows for a portrayal duction network. Such work has highlighted the of European resource recovery as clean and green. importance of global recycling networks (Crang et We show how a focus on recycling work as this is al., 2013), analysed material value translation actually performed within Northern EU member across economies (Alexander and Reno, 2012) and states results in a very different reading. We draw established the importance of resultant clusters of on research in resource recovery sectors in two reprocessing industries in less developed countries Northern European member states (the UK and that, whilst exemplifying industrial symbiosis and Belgium) to show that such work is associated circular economies, are often ‘dirty’ and polluting with the four Ds: it is dirty, often demeaning, phys- rather than highly technical, clean and green solu- ically demanding and in some cases, dangerous; tions (Gregson et al., 2012). Nonetheless, it has added to which it is extremely lowly paid. These pointed to the global organisation of material flows characteristics have clear and predictable effects and their connection to different kinds of labour on who does this type of work, through the histori- around the globe. However, it has paid little atten- cal association of waste work with marginalised tion to recycling labour within developed and foreign workers (Zimring, 2004) and its inter- countries. twining with current EU labour hierarchies. In the European policy literature, recycling is Resource recovery in the Northern EU member represented as a classic case of ‘ecological moderni- states is work that local labour is often unwilling to sation’ (Pellow et al., 2000), creating thousands of do (c.f. Tannock, 2013); it is often migrant work; it ‘green’ jobs within the EU in an innovative new sec- is highly gendered, with patterns depending on the tor that is argued to be beneficial to the environ- type of goods and materials being recovered; and it ment, through resource conservation and appropriate is associated particularly with workers from the A8 waste minimisation and management, and to the member states as well as non-EU nationals. As economy, through generating new forms of employ- such, our research shows that, when wastes are ment. Such representations figure strongly in the sequestered within the EU’s borders, it is labour two major European policy statements on green that frequently moves to achieve their recovery as growth and the development of a European green secondary resources.

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A second contribution of the paper relates to a of waste management have been increasingly regu- growing body of research on A8 migrant labour in lated out of existence and replaced with newer, mod- Northern Europe. This has focused on Polish ern forms of waste management. At the same time, migrants, for the most part, in the UK but particu- hazardous wastes have been regulated more tightly larly within London, and has concentrated on the and responsibly than in the past. This sense of pro- hospitality/catering and construction/handyman sec- gress figures strongly in recent EU strategy state- tors (Baum et al., 2007; Datta, 2008; Datta and ments on recycling and waste: Brickell, 2009; Devine et al., 2007a, 2007b; Friberg, 2012a; Janta, 2011; Janta et al., 2011; Lyon and Heavy polluting landfills and incinerators have been Sulcova, 2009; Perrons et al., 2010; Wills et al., cleaned up. New techniques have been developed for 2009; c.f. Stenning and Dawley, 2009). Work on the treatment of hazardous waste. Hazardous substances female migrant workers has addressed A8 labour but are being removed from vehicles and electrical and has focused far more on non-EU nationals, particu- electronic equipment. The levels of dioxins and other emissions from incinerators are being reduced. (EU, larly within global care chains in the domestic and 2005: 3) health-care sectors (Cox, 2007; Dyer et al., 2008; Yeates, 2012; but see Perrons et al., 2010). It has Recycling has played an important role in envi- emphasised how embodied attributes of workers are ronmental clean-up. Recovering materials from dis- drawn on, and interpellated, by employers and carded goods, which are then recycled through migrant workers at the micro scale of particular further rounds of manufacturing, has been the chief workplaces (McDowell et al., 2007). Across these means of reducing waste. In acting to reduce waste, literatures the term ‘the hard-working Pole’ emerges recycling is seen to be a means to a cleaner form of as a key cultural category, for both employers and consumption and, through its increasing application labour. By contrast, a focus on the resource recovery in business and industry, to cleaner forms of sector highlights divisions among A8 migrant work- production. ers. It shows a labour hierarchy in this part of the If ‘cleaner’ was the aim attached to recycling in secondary labour market that has Poles either at or the late 1980s and 1990s, the current favoured adjec- near its apex. In resource recovery there are jobs that tive is ‘greener’. The EU’s 2020 strategy after the Poles will not do and jobs where the ‘hard working’ 2008 financial crisis is for a smart, sustainable and trope is not drawn on. In certain recovery sectors inclusive EU, in which resource efficiency is seen as associations with physically hard, dirty work are a means to economic and ecological security and read through a hyper-masculinity that codes such sustainable growth. Recycling is seen to play a piv- tasks with fun, pleasure and the frisson of danger. otal role within this: Rather than hard work, recovery work – at least in certain sectors – is seen to offer exciting, easy work, Recycling has an essential role to play in achieving a for relatively good money. The paper concludes by major European and global policy priority: the shift to considering the wider ramifications of these findings a green economy… generates prosperity while with respect to A8 migrant labour and the policy maintaining a healthy environment and social equity goal of creating a pan-European recycling society. for current and future generations…. Today three of the most important challenges facing Europe are reducing We begin, however, by establishing the main con- environmental burdens, creating new jobs and tours of recycling as this is discursively constructed enhancing the research base for the economy. Recycling and performed within the EU, and its identification can make a substantial contribution to addressing all as a clean activity, central to greening economies. three challenges, offering a win–win opportunity. Clean and green, or dirty work? (EEA, 2011: 7–8) For the past thirty years waste has been at the heart of EU environmental policy. So too has a sense Recycling, then, sits at the heart of the EU’s of progressive cleansing, in which old polluting imagined economic transformation in the twenty- technologies and environmentally degrading forms first century (EC, 2011). Providing green as well as

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 Gregson et al. 5 clean high-tech growth, it is seemingly impervious asserted that, as recycling rates increase across the to critique. EU, a large number of new jobs in the new green Our contention is that this representation of economy will be created. In this way, the link between European recycling needs careful and critical inter- growth and waste is not only broken but so too is the rogation. This is not just because it has been argued association with limiting growth that has restricted that the capital-intensive materials recovery opera- the appeal of environmentalist positions. Instead, the tions that characterise European recycling create green economy becomes an engine for economic demand for more, not less, waste, nor because they growth. Shifting to the micro level, however, an open can be argued to have led to a consumer ‘rebound’ question is ‘just what types of jobs are created by the effect, as doing the recycling is used to justify more, recycling sector?’ The EEA state: not less, consumption at the level of individual households and consumers (Alexander and Reno, Recycling makes an… important contribution to the 2012). Rather, we question the degree to which green economy in terms of creating new jobs. The European recycling activities are as clean as they are employment opportunities in the recycling sector made out to be. To make this argument we first need include low skilled work in particular but also include to establish two points. medium and high skilled jobs, ranging from collection, materials handling and processing to manufacturing First, the thinking about European recycling is products. (EEA, 2011: 14) dominated by a technical and physical materialism (Alexander and Reno, 2012) that is pervasive within However, and tellingly, references to low-skilled the paradigms that dominate the recycling literature, work are not present in either the trade press or in many of which are derived from engineering and strategic-level EU policy documentation, in which 2 physical science. It emphasises the technical possi- only medium- and highly-skilled jobs are referred to bilities of materials transformations and the efficien- and where headline plans for ‘reducing materials use cies of recovery, and highlights that European by 17% to 24%’ are associated with ‘creating recycling is modern, or highly mechanised, rather between 1.4 and 2.8 million jobs’ (European than being labour intensive, as is believed to domi- Resource Efficiency Platform (EREP), 2013) nate recycling in the Global South (c.f. Minter, Together these two points signal elisions about 2013). The academic and policy literatures focus labour in the resource recovery sector. This has a overwhelmingly on the possibilities for, and rates of, weak and a strong form. The weak variant rests on a recovery, whilst the trade and business press focus degree of elusiveness and slippage with regard to much more on technological advances for mechanis- precisely which types of jobs are involved in the sec- ing materials characterisation, recognition and sepa- tor and at what skills level. Low-skilled work is not ration. From a social sciences perspective, however, itemised, and even ‘operative’ tasks such as kerbside a key absence here is the labour process in the devel- collection are represented as being medium-skilled oped world. This is significant since it raises social jobs. The stronger version is where labour is ren- equity issues about the scale of ecological benefit dered invisible through the focus on technology and versus bringing workers into closer contact with materials transformations. Both weak and strong environmental hazards, often in poor working condi- variants are a form of rhetorical masking. The use of tions (Pellow et al., 2000). the adjectives ‘clean’ and ‘green’, through their asso- Second, whilst current policy literature on ciations with sustainability, environmentally sound European recycling makes connections to jobs and management and resource efficiency, is the means to growth, it does so largely in macro-economic terms. this. They work to promote, but also simultaneously The argument here is two-fold. First, that recycling protect, European recycling by shielding labour creates more jobs than either landfill or incineration, from unwelcome scrutiny. and so is not just the better option in terms of the Research on global recycling networks shows waste hierarchy but also the better option in terms of that resource recovery depends on the separation, economic growth and well-being. Second, it is sorting and segregation of discarded goods

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(Botticello, 2012; Crang et al., 2013; Gregson et al., bins for recycling. Recycling collection points have 2013). The tasks of separation, sorting and segrega- proliferated in workplaces, businesses and transport tion relate to categories, or grades, of materials interchanges, as well as in publicly accessible demanded by producers using the recycled materi- spaces. The economics of efficient collection from als. Sorting discarded goods into categories is the dispersed points also generates (dirty) work. Old means by which value is created in resource recov- goods tend to have accumulated dirt. Discarded ery. Categories are expressed in terms of the degree goods are rarely cleaned and cared for with the of material purity and contamination for any given attentiveness lavished on other possessions. product. Generally, the more sorting, separation and Collection systems, too, lead to discarded material segregation work that occurs then the higher the and goods lingering in receptacles (up to two weeks purity of the resultant materials, and higher purity for household wastes, sometimes years for capital commands higher prices in the markets. Of greater goods), before being moved for onward sorting. As significance for our argument here, however, is the a consequence, materials deteriorate in quality, par- nature of sorting, separation and segregation as ticularly if they are exposed to the weather; they can work. It is here that connections between recycling attract urban animal life (typically foxes and rats); and dirty work, in both the physical and symbolic and they begin to develop the instantly recognisable sense, are to be drawn. pungent smell that is the aroma of discarded waste The language of purity and contamination does goods and materials. Correspondingly, working not just apply to material properties. Culturally, with such materials involves working closely with waste work has long been seen as impure, contami- dirty, often contaminated, stuff – be that discarded nating and symbolically damaging in the classic paper, packaging and bottles, old clothes, discarded sense argued by Mary Douglas (Douglas, 1966). Of electronics, cars or capital goods. necessity, separating, sorting and segregating dis- In summation, work in the resource recovery sec- carded goods and materials into grades involves the tor involves the physically dirty tasks of separating, physical handling of these materials, directly by sorting and segregating discarded materials or hand or mediated through tools and machinery. wastes. It assuredly does convert some, but not all, Further, like mining and all forms of heavy industry, discarded material to secondary resources for it involves an embodied work that brings workers onward processing by manufacturers and thus con- and discarded goods, and the materials they release, tributes to broader environmental benefits of into close proximity. This has potential consequences resource efficiency and conservation. But to do this for the workers’ health and well-being. As we show involves handling large amounts of physically below, these characteristics tend to be known by decaying things and materials, much of which smell local labour, which tends to be sceptical of the disgusting and some of which can be harmful. This alleged clean and green nature of jobs in the resource matters for workers, who remove physical dirt to recovery sector. In turn, this means that jobs in this generate cleaner streams of recovered materials. sector are often taken up by casual, itinerant and Recovering secondary resources for recycling, then, migrant labour. may be green, but as work it is about as far away Finally, structural and organisational features from the adjective ‘clean’ as can be imagined. combine to ensure that resource recovery in the EU Resource recovery work is also invariably dirty is physically dirty work. The capital-intensive work in the symbolic sense. Waste jobs and workers nature of European plants means that they require are tainted or contaminated by their association with large volumes of material sourced from large geo- physically impure materials. Classically, ‘dirty graphical areas to maintain productivity levels. This workers handle the distasteful tasks that are neces- is best illustrated through household recycling col- sary for the effective functioning of society that oth- lections. In response to the targets associated with ers can continue to regard themselves as clean and, the Landfill Directive, more and more homes across therefore, superior’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999: the EU have been issued with more and/or larger 416). In that sense these are abject jobs – that are

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 Gregson et al. 7 polluting yet necessary for society to see itself as embodied labour process and the stuff being worked clean (Crang, 2010). upon – all of which are vital in understanding ‘dirty We show below how the physical and symbolic work’. We use those detailed understandings of spe- combine and reinforce one another, in ways that cific illustrative cases to question the wider trends have profound effects on who gets to do these sorts reported in official accounts. of jobs in this emergent new sector in the EU. We draw on three sectors (dry recyclables, textiles and Inside the EU’s green economy: ship recycling) to show how manual labour contin- ues to play a critical role in many sectors of resource Recycling ‘dry recyclables’, recovery within the EU. A new form of low-skilled, textiles and ships low-paid, dirty work lies at the heart of the EU’s new Municipal materials recovery facilities and green economy, much of it performed by migrants from the A8 member states. the recovery of ‘dry recyclables’ The study is based on linked ethnographic Materials recovery facilities (MRFs) are in the van- research in the Northern European ship recycling guard of the drive to increase resource recovery in industry, conducted between 2007 and 2009, and in the EU. Municipal MRFs are dedicated to handling the UK textile recycling industry in 2009. The for- what was formerly called municipal solid waste, but mer involved repeat observation work combined is now called the ‘dry recyclables’ stream that is col- with visual methods in two separate yards that repre- lected from European households and, increasingly, sented the largest actors in the EU at the time, businesses. MRFs are capital-intensive, highly together with informal off-site interviews with work- mechanised plants, designed to process large vol- ers (Gregson et al., 2010b). The latter is based on site umes of waste materials and turn them into products visits to three textile recycling factories in the UK suitable for further processing; in practice this is fur- from 2008 to 2009, culminating in one month of ther rounds of manufacturing. Within them, materi- fieldwork on the factory floor in a London-based als recognition and characterisation technologies textile recycling firm (Botticello, 2012). Research separate out paper, card, glass, metals and plastics on the UK dry recyclables sector conducted in 2011 from the stream of materials. Municipal MRFs are combined interviews with managers and site visits to emblematic of a mechanised, modern materials eight facilities, chosen to capture varying plant size recovery regime. But, step inside these icons of and geographical location in the sector. Ethnographic clean, green and automated materials recovery and, methods enabled the study to extend its grasp of the alongside the technology, there is also a factory- labour process, for four reasons. First, official statis- based manual labour system. tics use official categories to report what happens; The initial stages of pre-processing within and formal interviews, especially with managers, Northern European municipal MRFs all take place in focus on what is meant to happen. In both cases, a small ‘picking cabin’. Conveyor belts feed arriving observation and photo-documentation illustrated materials to the picking cabin. It is here that most that what actually happened in practice was in every employees work in teams of six to eight for between sense messier than official accounts. Relatedly, there 8 and 11 hours a day in what is a very noisy and were clearly areas of illicit practice that would sim- confined space, standing by the belt. This is physi- ply not be otherwise accessible. Second, ethno- cally demanding work, governed by the speed of the graphic work can include the socialities of workers belt. Journalist Alan Minter describes being shown within and beyond the workplace, and the reputation round the equivalent process in a US municipal and understanding of forms of work through gossip MRF: and informal accounts in the locality. Third, it ena- bled engagement with the tacit and habituated ele- We climb a stairway to… the ‘pre-sort’. Here two ments of work environments. Fourth, we were able workers stand over a high-speed conveyor belt that to get closer to the materialities of the workplace, the carries freshly arrived, unsorted ‘recycling’ that needs

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to be, well, recycled! One of them reaches out and MRF cabin process workers are more than sugges- grabs a brown plastic bag from the blur, and just as tive of just who gets to do these jobs. quickly it disappears, sucked up by a large vacuum Materials recovery via European municipal tube positioned directly above them…. ‘Not everybody MRFs, then, may be mechanised and modern, but it can hack this job’. Alan leans over to say, nodding at simultaneously depends on hard, dirty, manual fac- the speeding, blurry line. ‘Some people get dizzy, tory work – the kind of low-paid assembly-line throw up’. (Minter (2013: 19) working that largely disappeared from Northern and Western Europe with the flight of manufacturing Similarly, a senior UK waste manager recounted capital to Asia. As we show with reference to other his experience of the picking cabin in a ‘state-of- parts of the resource recovery sector, these charac- the-art’ German municipal MRF in the following teristics repeat themselves across different types of terms: ‘guys, all of them Turks, stripped to the waist, materials recovery. sweating like pigs and working in 90 degrees’. The pickers’ task is to pull off the belt anything that either should not be in the recyclables stream or that is too problematic for the MRF’s capital- Textile recycling intensive, mechanised systems to handle. Interviews Textile recovery is similar to MRFs in that discarded with managers of municipal MRFs suggest that such textiles are collected from diverse sources. In the UK problems are commonplace. Over-sized card and the this would include recycling banks, charity shops wrong sorts of plastics often turn up on the belt, as and leftovers from car boot sales that are then does pretty much whatever else one can imagine – brought to recycling plants for processing. The dif- hospital waste, dead animals, plastic paddling pools ference, however, is that, even in the UK, textile and car tyres, even wheelie bins themselves. This is recycling is a highly labour-intensive process because recycling bins, much like all bins associated throughout, and shifts in large factories would typi- with the waste stream, are a means to getting rid of cally involve over 100 workers at a time. Clothes are unwanted, undesirable stuff, as waste workers first separated by type and then sorted by wear, fibre openly acknowledge.3 For workers therefore, gloves type, weight, size, age and gender. A series of con- and masks are not just imposed by health and safety veyor belts pass clothing around a factory, with rules, but regarded as necessary just to do this dirty workers handling, inspecting, assessing and classify- work. So too are ear phones, iPods and MP3 players, ing items by ‘picking’ them from the belt and then so that music can alleviate both the noise and the throwing them into the appropriate chutes, pigeon monotony of the work. holes, bins or other conveyor belts. These initially Physically demanding, monotonous, often dis- classified garments then move round the factory for gusting, as well as noisy and smelly, work as a picker further assessments by other workers. In such a way in a municipal MRF meets all the criteria that char- classifications are refined and finer grade distinc- acterise dirty work, and the pay is typically mini- tions produced, each one tailored to a market niche mum wage. Physically dirty work also becomes – from vintage/retro, to export for reuse, to industrial culturally ‘dirty work’. Much as in a host of other rags to fibre reclamation (Crang et al., 2013). The sectors, such as kitchen work, hotel housekeeping sometimes more than 400 resultant grades ensure not and cleaning, in the resource recovery sector embod- only that clothing has a second life, but also that the ied work combines with the cultural signifiers of dirt maximum economic value is extracted from the and waste to ensure that the people who do these clothing on the belt, through a variety of reuse and kinds of jobs are more likely to be certain types of recycling markets. workers than others. Municipal MRF managers are As with manual work in a municipal MRF, textile reluctant to publicise it, to grant access to their work- recycling is physically demanding. The toll that the ers, or to discuss labour in anything other than gen- work takes on the workers’ bodies is considerable. eral terms, but UK agency advertisements that Allergies to dust are commonplace; so too are skin specify that ‘Polish language skills’ are desirable for complaints, for workers in textile recycling plants do

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 Gregson et al. 9 not use gloves. Instead, they must rely on haptic, as the study factory. It was not uncommon here to find well as visual, senses to classify what is unpleasant, workers who had been in this factory for 6 years or smelly and often soiled clothing. Workers resort to even, in one instance, 16. Whilst explanations for over-the-counter remedies, such as nasal inhalers, to inertia from managers would typically suggest that attend to excessive sneezing and running noses, this kind of work was the best that such workers while many bring additional shoes to alleviate the could either do, or hope for, sheer exhaustion and effects of standing in the same spot for hours on end. tiredness at the end of each shift ‘lock’ workers into As with municipal MRFs, the pay is low: in 2011 in such patterns of work. It is perhaps such working the factory studied, all sorters earned £5.73 per hour, conditions that suggest why reports like Well dressed? so standard weekly take-home pay amounted to less The present and future sustainability of clothing and than £200. Working overtime, at £7 per hour, brought textiles in the United Kingdom (Allwood et al., 2006) it slightly above £200, which is still less than two- speak of the technical possibilities of recycling but thirds of the UK median wage. make no mention at all of the work involved. Textile recycling, like much textile work the world over, is gendered as primarily women’s work Ship recycling but, as with other areas of low-paid ‘dirty work’, it is particular women who get to do this work. In the In contrast to the municipal MRF and textile recy- study factory, Russian was the lingua franca, and the cling sectors, which rely on processing materials women working on the lines mostly came from ‘harvested’ from households on a regular basis, Eastern Europe, principally Lithuania, Bulgaria and European ship recycling is a volatile, low-frequency Russia, but not Poland. UK nationals were also nota- activity, reliant on the release of vessels into the ble by their absence, with the floor manager observ- scrap market, chiefly from member states’ navies ing that they ‘would be better off on the social’. In and the fishing fleet.4 As such, the work is project- previous years, the work force had been dominated based and characterised by temporary contracts. by West Africans, by workers from the Caribbean, Below management levels, the work shows a strong and before that by workers from Pakistan. In each tripartite division of labour. At the top of the labour labour market phase, prevailing ethnicities relate to hierarchy is asbestos remediation and hot and cold their perceived knowledge of key international mar- metal cutting, both of which require workers to have kets in second-hand textiles (c.f. Abimbola, 2012), the requisite level of training and certification. which are currently West Africa, India and Eastern Below this, a range of assistant jobs include fire Europe. Thus, when one textile recycler in the East watching, driving and a variety of metal work. At the Midlands was prosecuted for employing 30 illegal bottom of the hierarchy are the sorting jobs, all of immigrants there were 21 Ghanaians, six Indians, which involve separating materials, chiefly metals, two Nigerians and one from Niger (Holder, 2014). into categories. Some of this work is performed For the factory studied, ensuring that the best items mechanically, typically by magnets attached to get placed on the lines destined for Eastern European driver-operated heavy plant equipment. This sepa- markets mattered most, and Eastern Europeans were rates ferrous metals from the lower volume, but assumed (by employers) to have unique skills in higher value, non-ferrous metals. Further separation making these value judgements. Moreover, in this of non-ferrous metals is performed manually, typi- factory such essentialising knowledge connected cally by agency workers. All of this work is filthy with internal quality controls, in which employee work. It is outdoor work, surrounded by rust and numbers were placed on Eastern European sorting falling metal; the fumes released by hot metal cut- bags, making individual employees accountable for ting cannot be avoided; and hazardous wastes and their grading decisions. residues are all around (Gregson, 2011). With the Recruitment to textile recycling factories such as exception of a few environmental testers, this is this is largely word-of-mouth. Perhaps surprisingly, work performed exclusively by men, but there are labour turnover was not particularly high – at least in key distinctions in who does which jobs.

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Invariably, ship recycling within Europe entails male Eastern European labour that allegedly had itinerant, and often migrant, workers. Its basis in been brought into the town to do it. Rumours of project work, with ships sent to different facilities, ‘Poles living in caravans’ on site were rife. In this ensures this, but so too does the interchangeability instance therefore interpellation worked across of some of its associated tasks. Asbestos remedia- local and migrant labour groups, and not just within tion work, for example, covers buildings as well as firms. From the perspective of local labour, ‘Poles’ end-of-life ships. Asbestos remediation workers became a generic term for East and Central follow contracts, both within EU member states European (ECE) labour who were seen as ‘mad and between them. One job may be on a ship, enough’ and ‘foolhardy’ enough to risk working in another in a building such as a hospital or school; this particular firm and in this anticipated-to-be- another may be in a power station and yet another dirty industry. Thus, whilst EU policy attempts to in a retail store. The metal-cutting work within ship ensure that ‘some place else’s turn’ does not occur, recycling also fails to attract local labour and relies intergenerational knowledge of asbestosis and mes- instead on migrant workers. Sometimes, and paral- othelioma, and of the risks of metal work, combine leling Tannock’s (2013) work on meat-processing with stereotypical views to keep the indigenous factories in Wales, this relates to the poor reputa- labour force out of this sector and to see this work tion of particular firms in local labour markets. But as appropriate for others to do. it goes deeper. EU environmental regulations may Inside ship recycling yards, as with textile recy- suggest that former shipbuilding areas in the EU cling, the labour hierarchy frequently maps into eth- offer the most appropriate infrastructure for ship nic distinctions. This is illustrated by an established recycling operations, and green economy docu- ship recycling operation located in continental ments point to job creation in former industrial Northern Europe. The entirety of the work here is areas (EEA, 2011), but local labour is often unwill- organised through sub-contract chains, with differ- ing to take up jobs in the industry, even in areas ent companies hired to perform distinct phases of where there are relatively high levels of unemploy- work. Separate Dutch companies were contracted to ment. Instead, we encountered almost universal perform asbestos removal and hot cutting for the scepticism among locals over a rhetoric that posi- duration of the project. All of the workers employed tions ship recycling as offering jobs in a clean and by the Dutch companies were itinerant Dutch. Basic green industry. This is grounded firstly in embodied sorting functions in the yard, however, were per- knowledge; of the effects on lives of working in the formed by Turkish-French workers. At a given point shipbuilding industry, and of what materials went in breaking up a ship the priority becomes process- into the making of these ships and what would be ing the bulk of the metal quickly to sell it on, and at released in their unmaking, principally asbestos that point additional workers were hired on tempo- (Johnston and McIvor, 2000, 2004). Local people rary contracts via agencies known through personal spoke about knowing what materials went into contacts of the management. The majority of the ships and would equally come out of them. workers hired were Poles, who were supplemented Secondly, there is a sense of social and spatial with Czechs at a point where further additional injustice. The argument frequently articulated is labour was required. The pay differentials for work- that, having lived and worked once with dirty ers were considerable: whilst Dutch hot-metal cut- industries, these communities do not want to repeat ters earned €36.50/hour, the agency was paid €20/ the experience – that it is ‘some place else’s turn’. hour, and the Polish workers actually received €10/ This argument was made on multiple occasions by hour. So, the former earned three times and the latter local campaign groups in the UK in relation to the 80% of the median Belgian income. In this way the Hartlepool ‘ghost ships’ (Hillier, 2009) and was sector exhibits a classic core/peripheral worker dis- repeated throughout a protracted legal case.5 Even tinction, in which low-cost ECE labour, supplied via once the work had begun, local people continued to agencies, is used to provide numerical flexibility recite the argument and to refer to the transient (c.f. Friberg, 2012a). Polish employment in this

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 Gregson et al. 11 yard is also noteworthy for three further reasons. Summary First, it confirmed the down-skilling trajectory noted in the literature in relation to East–West Resource recovery within the Northern European migration (Drinkwater et al., 2008 c.f. Bachan and member states has resulted in low-paid, dirty, monot- Sheehan, 2011). The Poles recruited here had previ- onous and physically demanding jobs, some which ously worked as carpenters, welders, truck drivers are physically dangerous. These characteristics cut and car mechanics in Poland. Second, their employ- across different forms of materials recovery. Cultural ment histories in Western Europe illustrated consid- categorisations combine with the physical character- erable mobility between EU member states (c.f. istics of the work to make European resource recov- Friberg, 2012b; Stenning and Dawley, 2009) – in ery a dirtier form of dirty work than that occurring in this case, between the UK, Belgium and the the hospitality and catering sectors, and on a par with Netherlands, where they had previously performed healthcare-related body work (Dyer et al., 2008; a variety of construction and warehousing jobs. McDowell et al., 2007). This is because it entails Third, and most significantly, the Polish men work- working directly with wastes. It may recover sec- ing in this yard did not recite the mantra of ‘the ondary resources but it means handling material that hard-working Pole’ (c.f. Datta and Brickell, 2009). is already declared to be waste, and therefore Instead, they talked about their work as relatively expelled from the body social. In such a way the undemanding, valuing their boss for not pushing veneer of green jobs is stripped off. Recycling work them too hard; and in terms of fun and pleasure. is an activity that comes within the cultural orbit of Although the lower pay was a source of considera- waste work the world over. Furthermore, regardless ble grievance, the work itself was valued for its of where this type of work occurs in the world, its unpredictability, excitement and even for its danger performance – and particularly who gets to do it – – particularly when this came at the expense of mis- works with and from workers’ embodied attributes takes made by Czech workers, whose inexperience as well as stereotypical ideas. Waste work globally resulted in a major fire incident in the yard. Tales of has long been seen as a means to marking ethnic and individuals collapsing through the effects of expo- racial, as well as gendered, differences. It is there- sure to the fumes of hot cutting, of the danger of the fore not surprising that it has become a means to work, of using shortcuts rather than doing the job inscribing distinctions between workers from the properly and of learning on the job were all narrated former EU-15 and those from the A8 countries and positively through the figure of the tough, fearless non-EU countries. The distinctions drawn within to the point of recklessness, strong and heroic Polish and between the A8 group of migrant workers (Poles male – a classic case of reframing dirty work versus other nationalities), however, point to finer through positive characteristics (Ashforth and grained understandings of the ECE labour force. Kreiner, 1999) though characteristics that here lead Differentiated processes of interpellation work both to their own problems. Hyper-mobility in relation to between but also within resource recovery work- temporary work is critical for its potential occupa- places and local labour markets. Particularly signifi- tional health risks, particularly when combined with cant is how a hyper-masculinity once characteristic a hyper-masculine revelling in fun, danger and of former manufacturing areas in Northern member unpredictability. However, in contrasting their states has resisted recycling work, but how that same knowledge and expertise to the lack of knowledge hyper-masculinity is being reworked within the ECE of their Czech counterparts, these Polish workers labour force to reclaim such labour. More broadly, drew a clear distinction between categories of ECE our research shows that the growth of resource- labour, in this case based on ethnicity and hyper- recovery activities in Northern Europe rests on and masculinity. These Polish men were differentiating exacerbates uneven development in the EU (Smith dirty work in ways that strengthened their group and Timar, 2010). It both relies on low-cost ECE identity, not through tropes of ‘hard working Poles’, labour and is a means by which hierarchies in ECE but exuberance. labour are emerging and intensifying. We conclude

Downloaded from eur.sagepub.com at TEXAS SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY on November 14, 2014 12 European Urban and Regional Studies the paper by reflecting more broadly on the wider mobility and temporality, our research joins with a implications of these findings. body of work in economic geography to show how old East–West distinctions are being reworked Conclusions through the core/peripheral labour distinction in Northern Europe. It demonstrates that the opening of European policy promotes resource recovery in borders to people can be a means to reworking and Europe as a clean and green activity central to creat- intensifying inequalities (Smith and Timar, 2010) ing sustainable economies within the EU-27. ‘Lifting that can be further intensified by the closing of bor- the veil’ on European resource recovery shows it to ders to waste things. Old East–West distinctions are be far from clean and green but, instead, a new form being reworked in relation to the drive to create of ‘dirty work’. When waste is not allowed to be pro- green economies in the EU, precisely because the cessed in peripheral places, in the name of environ- jobs that are being created by keeping wastes within mental justice, then peripheral workers tend to move Northern Europe are not ones that many Northern to do the jobs created instead. The implications of Europeans seem to wish to do. This raises profound this are three-fold. question marks over the capacity of sustainable First, in terms of the recycling labour process: this economies to deliver the social inclusivity that also paper has demonstrated that resource recovery, wher- sits at the heart of the EU’s 2020 strategic vision. ever it occurs, with whatever materials, continues to Third, the goal of creating a pan-European recy- require manual labour. Whilst representations of cling society requires pan-European resource recov- European recycling emphasise mechanisation and ery. This paper has shown that resource recovery in automation, highlighting a connection with modernity Northern European states depends on migrant labour and a distancing from images of recycling in the from A8 countries willing to do ‘dirty work’ abroad Global South, manual labour is necessary to the crea- for higher pay, which begs questions as to how to tion of value in European resource recovery. The extend and intensify levels of resource recovery in work of materials segregation and sorting continues to the A8 states themselves, where recovery rates are involve people whose work has been shown to be still at very low levels but rates of employment in amongst the dirtiest of European ‘dirty work’. That recycling are relatively high (Eurostat, 2009: 333). fundamental point is masked by the discursive con- Very real questions need to be asked as to who is struction of European recycling as being clean and going to do this kind of ‘dirty work’ in Eastern and green. The clean and green veneer serves to protect Central Europe. Historically, waste work in the ECE European resource recovery from too much scrutiny has been associated with the Roma, as an itinerant, and obscures how recycling work is socially and cul- petty-entrepreneurial activity, of a type not far turally constituted as ‘dirty work’, precisely because it removed from resource recovery in parts of the is waste work. Our contention is that it is important to Global South (Scheinberg and Anschtz, 2006: 263– recognise these jobs as such, for what they are, rather 264). As capital-intensive, highly mechanised than to engage in a politics of silence and/or erasure. resource recovery infrastructure moves east, with Second, in terms of migration and its intersec- plastics recovery plants being opened in Poland by tions with uneven transformations across Europe: the Austrian multinational ALPLA, taking with it a this paper has demonstrated that, far from creating demand for the types of manual labour already visi- new, skilled employment, resource recovery is, for ble in the Northern member states, a strong possibil- the most part, located within secondary labour mar- ity is that further cultural reworking will occur around kets and often rests on migrant labour, be that low- this green, but dirty, work. An effect of uneven trans- cost, itinerant EU labour or that of non-EU nationals. formations in the development of resource recovery The implications for the debate on post-2004 in the EU is that, ironically, future growth in resource enlargement and its effect on migration are consider- recovery may yet rest on opening borders to workers able. Whilst that literature emphasises new ways of from non-EU countries – the very workers whom the thinking about migration based on open borders, initial interventions in European waste policy, some

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30 years ago, was designed to protect. The rise in 5. The ‘ghost ships’ were vessels from the US reserve immigration to Poland from 7000 to 212,000 people fleet and of Second World War vintage. Since the per annum over the last decade is certainly suggestive US banned exporting them to less-developed coun- here, but the topic needs empirical investigation as to tries, it was open to a UK tender to dismantle them. the organisation of work and the values being associ- The importation of such waste caused a local, indeed national, furore. ated with changing types of ‘recycling’ work. Precisely because of its irrevocable associations with References waste and with ‘dirty work’, resource recovery will always be intrinsically bound up with race and eth- Abimbola O (2012) The international trade in secondhand nicity. As resource recovery shifts east within the EU, clothing: Managing information asymmetry between to encompass the predominantly white, post-Socialist West African and British traders. Textile 10(2): 184– 199. states, we anticipate those debates taking on yet new Alexander C and Reno J (eds) (2012) Economies of twists and a new intensity. Recycling: The Global Transformation of Materials, Values and Social Relations. London: Zed Books. Acknowledgements Allwood J, Laursen S, de Rodríguez C and Bocken N Thanks to two anonymous referees and to Adrian Smith for (2006) Well dressed? The present and future sustain- their comments on this paper. The usual disclaimers apply. ability of clothing and textiles. Cambridge: Institute for Manufacturing. Funding Ashforth B and Kreiner G (1999) ‘How can you do it?’: Dirty work and the challenge of constructing a posi- This work was supported by the Economic and Research tive identity. Academy of Management Review 24(3): Council Large Grant, The Waste of the World (RES 413–434. 000230007). Bachan R and Sheehan M (2011) On the labour market progress of Polish accession workers in South-east Notes England. International Migration 49(2): 241–249. 1. The employment data in Eurostat are not structured to Barnett C, Cloke P, Clarke N and Malpass A (2005) allow exact calculations, as waste processing occurs Consuming ethics: Articulating the subjects and spaces in various parts of the ‘eco-industry’ sector where of ethical consumption. Antipode 37(1): 23–45. overall employment rises from 2 million to 3.4 mil- Barr S, Ford N and Gilg A (2003) Attitudes towards recy- lion in the period. cling household waste in Exeter, Devon: Quantitative 2. The dominance of technical approaches is well to the and qualitative approaches. Local Environment 8(4): fore in contributions to the key journals in the field, 407–421. which include Journal of Industrial Ecology, Journal Barr S, Gilg A and Ford N (2001) A conceptual frame- of Cleaner Production, Resources Conservation and work for understanding and analysing attitudes Recycling and Journal of Waste Management. towards household waste management. Environment 3. In a BBC Four documentary, ‘The Secret History of and Planning A 33(11): 2025–2048. Waste’, retired waste workers recounted tales from Basel Action Network (BAN) (2002) Exporting Harm: the waste conveyor belt, citing one instance in which The High-Tech Trashing of Asia. Seattle, WA: Basel the belt had to be stopped because of the appear- Action Network. ance of a dead baby amidst the material. Although Basel Action Network (BAN) (2005) The Digital Dump: the exception, such occurrences illustrate the general Exporting Re-use and Abuse to Africa. Seattle, WA: point, and they are confirmed by intermittent media Basel Action Network. reports of dead human bodies in materials recov- Baum T, Dutton E, Karimi S, Kokkranikal J, Devine F ery facilities and recycling centres (Gyekye, 2008; and Hearns N (2007) Cultural diversity in hospitality Murphy, 2012). work. Cross Cultural Management: An International 4. Ocean-going commercial vessels are typically recy- Journal 14(3): 229–239. cled in South and East Asia, amid considerable oppro- Botticello J (2012) Between classification, objectification brium over labour and environmental conditions, and and perception: Processing second-hand clothes for are a poster child example for ENGOs of why recy- recycling and reuse. Textile: The Journal of Cloth cling should be done in the EU (Crang, 2010). and Culture 10(2): 164–183.

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