Labour Rights Behind Diaspora Food: Chinese Migrant Workers in the Restaurant Sector

Two-sentence abstract
This article explores how Chinese migrant workers in the restaurant industry
encounter obstacles in accessing and exercising labour rights. It contends that while
Chinese diaspora restaurants are commonly valorised as sites of food culture, tourism
and multicultural city life, the migrant labour that sustains these sites is often invisible,
precarious and inadequately safeguarded.
Keywords: Chinese migrant workers; diaspora food; restaurant sector; labour rights;
hidden labour; social justice
Discussion Paper
Tourists and local consumers often experience Chinese restaurants as places of culture,
taste and multicultural identity. They are part of urban tourism in Chinatowns, city
food districts and local communities providing Chinese food, visual symbols, family
run hospitality and a feeling of cultural authenticity. Yet behind this public image of
diaspora food lies a less visible reality: the labour of Chinese migrant workers who
cook, clean, serve customers, prepare food and keep these restaurants operating. The
paper argues that Chinese diaspora restaurants must be not only interpreted as cultural
or commercial spaces but also as workplaces that are determined by inequality,
migration status and unequal access to labour rights.
The main topic that is discussed in this paper is the impact of working conditions in
Chinese diaspora restaurants on the capacity of Chinese migrant workers to access
and exercise their labour rights. The restaurant industry is labour intensive and tends
to rely on long hours, physical work and flexible staffing. Such pressures can be
further influenced by small business organizations, co-ethnic employment networks
and informal workplace practices in Chinese diaspora restaurants. Although such
networks may assist migrants to secure jobs within a short period of time particularly
when they lack much English or have fewer opportunities in the broader labour
market, they can also create workers’ dependency on employers and reduce the
capacity of employees to resist unfair treatment.
The main argument of this paper is that the existence of labour rights in law does not
necessarily imply that they will be effective. Chinese migrant workers may experience
low pay, excessive working hours, unclear contracts, limited payslips, poor working
conditions and a lack of employee voice. These issues are more than mere workplace
conflicts. They also show the broader inequality of the hospitality industry where the
migrant laborers tend to be clustered at the bottom and less seen, such as in the
kitchens, housekeeping and other behind-the-scenes jobs. Such positions play an
important role in the experience of the restaurant yet it is hardly ever appreciated by
the customers or even by the tourism discourse of food culture.
The impediments to the exercise of labour rights are also high. The language can
complicate the understanding of contracts, payslips, health and safety information or
complaint procedures by workers. Lack of knowledge on UK employment law might
also be a factor that may prevent workers from knowing their rights in terms of
minimum wage, working hours, holiday pay or discrimination. Another source of
vulnerability is immigration status especially where the workers are afraid that
reporting exploitation would result in loss of jobs, retaliation or deportation. Even
workers with legal status may be reluctant to report problems when they rely on
employers to provide them with income, housing, meals, references or future
prospects. In this regard silence must not be confused with agreement. It can rather
demonstrate low power and lack of protection access.
These problems have significant impacts on the daily workplace experiences of
Chinese migrant workers. The insecurity of employment may lower the confidence,
autonomy and control over future by the workers. Wellbeing and dignity can be
influenced by long hours, low wages and physically demanding work. There are also
few chances of promotion that might leave migrant workers in low status jobs despite
their labour being key to the success of the restaurant. Thus, not only pay or contracts
are issues of labour rights. They are also about voice, recognition, safety and
belonging in the workplace.
From a social justice perspective, the celebration of Chinese diaspora food is
incomplete if the workers who make these experiences possible remain invisible and
insecure. Tourism and hospitality as inclusive should also consider the availability of
the diverse cultural experiences among consumers. It must also take care of the fact
that those people who work behind these experiences are treated in a proper way and
with dignity. The better working environment of restaurants would imply having
access to the job information in Chinese and other languages, better terms of
employment, more supervision over wages and hours worked, complaint system and
trade unions, NGOs and local organisations. This paper concludes by inviting debate
on the ways in which tourism and hospitality can leave behind the multicultural space
of food and instead start protecting the migrant population who support it.
References
Janta, H., Lugosi, P., Brown, L. and Ladkin, A. (2012) ‘Migrant networks, language
learning and tourism employment’, Tourism Management, 33(2), pp. 431–439.
Li, X. (2019) Employment Relations and Ethnic Minority Enterprise: An Ethnography
of Chinese Restaurants in the UK. London: Routledge.
Luo, S., Gadd, D. and Broad, R. (2023) ‘The criminalisation and exploitation of
irregular Chinese migrant workers in the UK’, European Journal of Criminology,
20(3), pp. 1016–1036.

I think this discussion paper is valuable, because it puts Chinese restaurants back into the labour context from a simple cultural consumption space. For many tourists, diaspora food often represents an attractive cultural experience, but this article reminds readers that this experience depends on migrant labour that is not easily visible. This perspective makes Chinese restaurants no longer just a part of multicultural tourism, but also a matter of labour rights and social justice.

On the basis of the original discussion of hidden labour, Chinese migrant workers can also be understood as the creators of hospitality value. This does not move away from the paper’s concern with protection. It adds that these workers help maintain the restaurant experience that customers feel. If migrant workers are only regarded as low-status labour, the discussion of labour rights can easily stay at the level of “avoiding harm”; if they are regarded as value creators, we can emphasise the importance of recognition and voice (Lugosi and Ndiuini, 2022).

From this perspective, the issue of labour rights raised in the original text can also be further understood within the structure of hospitality employment. Injustice in Chinese restaurants should not only be regarded as poor management by individual employers, but also as related to long-term labour precarity in the tourism and hospitality industry (Robinson et al., 2019). In this way, inclusive hospitality does not only mean avoiding exploitation, but also means recognising the contribution of migrant workers to cultural experience and service work.

References

Lugosi, P. and Ndiuini, A. (2022) Migrant mobility and value creation in hospitality labour. Annals of Tourism Research, 95, 103429.
Robinson, R.N.S., Martins, A., Solnet, D. and Baum, T. (2019) Sustaining precarity: critically examining tourism and employment. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 27(7), 1008-1025.