‘I cannot transform myself into a pay slip’: Statutory social work as a support structure for precarious migrant workers’ labour struggles in Finland

Despite the centrality of labour in precarious migrants’ struggles to access and reproduce legal statuses that shape territorial and social rights, little attention has been given to the role of statutory social work in their labour struggles. This article explores the labour struggles that precarious migrant workers in Finland are engaged in, what kind of support they request from social workers and how the social workers respond. Drawing on ethnographic data, the article analyses the role of social work in their labour struggles by deploying the perspectives of precarization and social reproduction. The findings reveal that migrants’ labour struggles are often intertwined with ambitions to access or reproduce a legal status that would give them broader access to the means of social reproduction, shaping the ways in which labour struggles play out. When migrants must complete different applications to increase their chances of accessing a desired legal status, their unwillingness to claim unpaid salaries is rooted in a fear that the claim would affect one of the necessary applications. Nevertheless, migrants support the need for social workers to have direct contact with employers and other authorities in cases where a positive result is expected.