The Metropolis

Insight into the labourers waiting every day for work, outside Seven Sisters Wickes

Mike Pollitt | Thursday 18 October, 2012 13:26

Sorana Stanescu in the New Statesman has a fascinating long read about construction workers, many of them economic migrants from Eastern Europe, who gather each morning outside Wickes in Seven Sisters looking for work.

“The men gather in the shadow of the Wickes hardware store, looking out for the odd jobs that keep them in the UK and for the police that periodically moves them along…With no offices or agencies supporting them, the day labourers crowd the pavement and advertise their trade through their attire – grubby tracksuits spattered with paint and plaster. When potential clients pull up, they haggle over rates and hitch rides. When the police show up, they run…Most of the men outside Wickes said they expected to earn around £50 (€60) a day.”

If you live and work in London but weren’t born here (and I fall into that category), then you’re an economic migrant too. That’s something worth thinking about.

Sorana Stanescu at The New Statesman – Cheap, and far from free: The migrant army building Britain

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