Irregularity meets integration : Conceptualising the agency and positionalities of irregular Filipino migrants navigating the (in)formal rules of a post-Brexit, mid-pandemic UK

Sammanfattning: Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic are two recent crises whose combined effects exacerbated the exclusion of irregular migrants in Europe. In this thesis, I will explore the structure-agency linkages that shaped the everyday survival strategies of irregular Filipino migrants (IFMs) in navigating a post-Brexit, mid-pandemic UK. Using Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson’s frameworks of political-civil society, differential inclusion, and internal borders, I examine how IFMs exercised their agency against the “formal” rules of the state as well as the “informal” rules set by fellow social actors. The themes that emerged from the analysis underscored the long-debated sociological tensions between structure and agency. Among these, the most recurring one is that IFMs’ agency were expanded or delimited by their positionality vis-à-vis various social actors such as employers, landlords, co-tenants, “benevolent” individuals, and immigration middlemen. This necessitates further studies that could link these micro-level structurations to the broader epistemic shifts within Europe’s migration governance framework.