Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast

In this episode of Mobility, Work, and Rights, Ilse van Liempt and Nando Sigona bring together three of the world’s leading scholars of domestic work - Rhacel Parreñas (Princeton University), Bridget Anderson (University of Bristol) and Sabrina Marchetti (Ca' Foscari University of Venice) - to unpack how migration and labour regimes shape the everyday lives of the workers who keep households running across Europe and beyond. They explore why ordinary families become employers, how global care chains redistribute inequality, and what new research from the I-CLAIM project reveals about the irregularisation of migrant domestic work today.
Our podcast picks
Books
- Anderson, B (2000) Doing the dirty work? Bloomsbury
- Marchetti, S (2022) Migration and domestic work, Springer (open access)- Parreñas, R (2025) The trafficker next door, Norton & Co.

PodcastNot Just Your Cleaning Lady, The Invisible Community Podcast

I-CLAIM reports
- Hajer, M., & van Liempt, I. (2025). Irregular migrants in the Dutch Domestic Work Sector. I-CLAIM. DOI: ⁠https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15775196⁠
- Marchetti, S., and Lashchuk, I. (2025) Irregularised migrant domestic workers in Naples, Italy. I-CLAIM. DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/15775615
- Merikoski, P., and Näre, L. (2025) Precarious migrants in domestic cleaning work. Findings from Finland. I-CLAIM. DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/15775520- Sigona, N., Piemontese, S., Mendes, S.S., Achi, A. (2025) Irregularised migrants doing domestic work in the United Kingdom. I-CLAIM. DOI: https://zenodo.org/records/15775346
How to cite
van Liempt, I, Sigona, N, Parreñas, R, Anderson, B, Marchetti, S (2025) "Who Cares? Migrant Domestic Workers and the Cost of Care", Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast, S1 E8, 28 November 2025.
Call to action 
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While Trump's administration continues its mass deportation campaign and the European Commission launches a new strategy for streamlining returns, including by normalising the idea of offshore warehousing of migrants awaiting removal, we think it is important and useful to offer some (qualified) hope by focusing on two recent regularisation schemes in The Netherlands and Italy.
Our podcast picks
- BOOK: Boswell, C. and Chabal, E. (eds) (2023) States of Ignorance: governing irregular migration in Western Europe, Cambridge University Press.
- ARTICLE: Bonizzoni, P., & Hajer, M. (2022). Civil Society Actors and the 2020 Italian Amnesty: Bordering to Deborder? Journal of Intercultural Studies, 44(1), 44–60. https://doi.org/10.1080/07256868.2022.2134317
- REPORT: The right to legal residence and the colonial past: are former Dutch citizens born in Suriname discriminated as compared to former Dutch citizens born in other (Western) countries? by Raffaela Abbate, Lara van Daalen, Paul Fosse, Anouk Hol & Salomé Rakotovao, 2022
- REPORT: Yeo, C, Sigona, N., Godin, M. (2022) Parallels and Differences Between Ending Commonwealth And EU Citizen Free Movement, Eurochildren Research Brief Series, No. 4, 2022
- MEDIA: Nigerian family deported after years in Netherlands despite integration, NL Times, 23 May 2025
How to cite this episode
Sigona, N, van Liempt, I, Hajer, M., de Vlaming , F. , Bonizzoni, P., (2025) “Let's talk regularisation", Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast, S1 E7, 6 June 2025.
Call to action
⁠⁠Follow the podcast⁠⁠ on all major podcasting platforms or through our ⁠⁠RSS Feed⁠⁠.  Get all the latest updates from ⁠⁠I-CLAIM ⁠⁠ on⁠ ⁠ ⁠⁠BlueSky⁠⁠,  and ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠

In this episode of Mobility, Work, and Rights, Nando Sigona speaks with Letizia Palumbo, researcher at the Univiersity of Venice Ca' Foscari and author of Taking Vulnerabilities to Labour Exploitation Seriously. The book examines how European and national legal frameworks shape migrant workers’ vulnerabilities—particularly in agriculture and domestic work and how intersecting legal, economic, and social factors create and exacerbate exploitation. With a focus on Italy and comparisons with the UK, this episode unpacks the tensions between labour migration policies and measures to combat severe exploitation. Join us for a thought-provoking discussion on the systemic dimensions of labour exploitation and the challenges in protecting migrant workers' rights.
Our podcast picks
- BOOK: Palumbo, L (2024) Taking Vulnerabilities to Labour Exploitation Seriously: A Critical Analysis of Legal and Policy Approaches and Instruments in Europe, Springer IMISCOE Research Series. Open Access
- BLOG: Situational Vulnerability in Supranational and Italian Legislation and Case Law on Labour Exploitation by Maria Grazia Giammarinaro and Letizia Palumbo
- REPORT: Palumbo, L, Sciurba A (2018) The vulnerability of women migrant workers in agriculture and the EU: the need for a Human Rights and Gender based approach, European Parliament Open AccessHow to cite this episode 
Sigona, N, Palumbo, L (2025) “Structures of exploitation", Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast, S1 E6, 21 March 2025.
Call to action 
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What is irregular migration? We often start our conversations with this question, today we really want to dig in on how and why media and political narratives on irregular migration really matters not only because they shape public perceptions but also how our institutions respond to this phenomenon.
 Our hosts, Nando Sigona and Ilse van Liempt, explore these questions with two guests: professor Bastian Vollmer who coordinated the I-CLAIM work on narratives and representations of irregular migration and Michele Levoy, director of PICUM.
Our podcast picks … 
I-CLAIM Country reports on narratives of irregular migration:
- UK: https://i-claim.eu/project/the-narrative-construction-of-migrant-irregularity-in-the-united-kingdom/
- Italy : https://i-claim.eu/project/the-public-discourse-on-migration-irregularity-and-work-in-italy/
- The Netherlands: https://i-claim.eu/project/discourses-about-irregularised-migrants-in-the-netherlands/
- Finland: https://i-claim.eu/project/narratives-of-irregular-migration-in-finland/
- Germany: https://i-claim.eu/project/discourses-about-irregularisedmigrants-in-germany/
- Poland: https://i-claim.eu/project/narratives-about-irregularised-migrants-in-poland/
EU: https://i-claim.eu/project/discourses-about-irregularised-migrants-at-the-eu-level/
How to cite this episode 
van Liempt, I , Sigona, N, Levoy, M, Vollmer, B (2025) “Narratives of irregularity", Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast, S1 E5, 8 March 2025.
 Call to action 
⁠Follow the podcast⁠ on all major podcasting platforms or through our ⁠RSS Feed⁠.  Get all the latest updates from ⁠I-CLAIM ⁠ on⁠ ⁠ ⁠BlueSky⁠,  and ⁠LinkedIn⁠

In the fourth episode of Mobility, Work, and Rights, hosts Nando Sigona and Ilse van Liempt explore the relation between migration status and working conditions and what it means to work the nightshift.

Nando and Ilse are joined by two guests who help them in this task: Julius Cezar MacQuarie who teaches and researches at the University of Cork and his the author of Invisible Migrant Nightworkers in 24/7 London (Springer 2023); and Renzo Sgolacchia, architect, researcher and film-maker, author of Living Labour, a documentary on the lives of Polish, Spanish and Roma workers in the Netherlands.

Our podcast picks … 

Books:

- Invisible Migrant Nightworkers in 24/7 London (2023): https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-36186-9

- Living on the Margins: Undocumented Migrants in a Global City by Alice Bloch and Sonia McKay (2017)

Films:

- Invisible Lives: Romanian Night Workers in London

- The Sleepless Bat Trailer a.k.a Nightshift Spitalfields

Report:

Cleaning up Westminster: Understanding Racial Capitalism Through Ethnographies of Racialised and/or Migrant Night Cleaners in UK Parliament.

Article:

Night-Time and Refugees: Evidence from the Thai-Myanmar Border | Journal of Refugee Studies

Podcast:

NightWorkPod

  

How to cite this episode 

Van Liempt, I , Sigona, N, MacQuarie, JC, Sgolacchia, R (2025) “The night shift and the politics of exhaustion”, Mobility, work and rights: the I-CLAIM podcast, S1 E4, 21 January 2025.

 

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