A workforce beyond the labour market: Migrant workers or the illiberal labour on the island of Mauritius

Investigating migrant labour on an outsourced site of the globalized economy (factories on the island of Mauritius) this article explores the routine of a workforce which escapes the liberal institution of the labour market. Proposing the concept of "illiberal labour", this article sheds light on two dimensions of employing foreign labour. First and foremost this constitutes a decommodification of labour, an employers' solution to cope with a local workforce deemed to be too lazy and insufficiently committed to the production process. Confronted with a range of formal and informal rules imposed by the state, and by employers and their representatives, foreign workers are forced to be constantly available for work, thus allowing companies to adapt working times to the fluctuations of international demand. Secondly, however, migrant labour also constitutes a reform of the moral economy of Mauritian industry, a new distribution of the reciprocal obligations between the "good worker" and the "fair employer" evident when labour disputes arise.