“From the hell that is China, workers travel to the hell that is the undocumented person’s Britain.”
There are an estimated 170,000 to 200,000 undocumented Chinese workers in Britain, employed in the hardest, most demanding and poorly paid jobs in the country, subject to routine abuse and exploitation, even violent assault. Their lives are documented in Chinese Whispers, a new book by Taiwanese/British journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai, who spent several years in this shadowy community, working undercover and getting to know those who made the arduous and hazardous journey from China to Britain with the simple hope of earning enough money to give their families back home a better life.
It would have been virtually impossible for these workers to get a legitimate work visa in Britain, so many had no option but to pay snakeheads vast sums of money to smuggle them across the continents. Once in Britain, they became essentially indentured labourers until they paid off their debts. Even those not indebted to traffickers, like student visa over-stayers, could only get work in agriculture, food possessing and manufacturing, through an unscrupulous network of labour supply agencies who would regularly cheat workers out of their pay and charge them a new “registration fee” every time they got sacked – which could happen at a moment’s notice.
Because they have no legal status, undocumented workers have little right to redress and are subject to criminal abuse and extortion. Pai documents the cases of a worker who died on the factory floor because he was not given time off after complaining of a headache and a nanny who was raped by her employer. In many ways, undocumented workers in Britain have even fewer rights than migrant workers in China. At least in China, the authorities have attempted to improve the legal rights, and living and working conditions of migrant workers, while in Britain, fear of illegal immigration has made recognition of the contribution undocumented workers make to the economy in Britain as well as China, through the money they send back home, a political impossibility, for the time being at least.
Chinese Whispers is published by Penguin.
