The quantification of migrant labour from the Pacific: gender and the f…..g Plaza

Prescott and Hooper (2009) drew attention in their paper to the change for Pasifika workers having to adapt from a “commons” driven society to an “anti-commons” society. They showed how migrants coming from a task orientated society had to adapt very quickly to what the French writer Foucault (1977a) identified as a disciplinary regime characterised by measurement, and surveillance from invisible managers. Compare this with, for example, the task of fishing among an island community. Fishing depends on nature. The tides, currents, winds and weather must all be right there being no fixed time of starting.