'We are ghosts': Britain's migrant night workers

Press/Media

Description

London (AFP) – "We are ghosts on the night shift," says Leandro Cristovao from Angola, who has worked the graveyard shift at a south London market for seven years.

Subject

In the last decade, Britain's nine-million-strong nighttime workforce has become increasingly reliant on migrants like Cristovao, as the number of UK-born workers doing night work shrinks. I talked to Akshata Kapoor journalist with AFP (UK & Ireland), among others, about why hashtag#migrant hashtag#nightshifters are not acknowledged for their work.

On the whole, this is a structural problem: temporal labour of migrants working the nightshift is not worthy of investment by today's capitalism. Which is why large corporations like hashtag#Heathrow* and hashtag#BritishAirways outsourcing to grabbers or 'penny-pinchers' like hashtag#OCS, fail to hold onto their promises to become 100% hashtag#LivingWage employers.

In this short film, 3 accounts of migrant hashtag#nightshifters are carved out of the darkness.

On the backdrop of this news, hashtag#migrant hashtag#cleaners strike hashtag#Heathrow* and all the while, the UK government is clamping down on overseas workers -- particularly for low-wage employees.

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Read Mark Bergfeld's piece in the Jacobin for a full account on the ongoing strike by cleaners at Heathrow: https://lnkd.in/edn3kkvQ

 

Period19 Dec 2025

Media contributions

1

Media contributions

  • Title'We are ghosts': Britain's migrant night workers
    Degree of recognitionInternational
    Media name/outletNews Agency London (AFP) Agence France-Presse
    Media typeOnline Article - Other
    Duration/Length/Size5 minute read online article and 4:44 minutes online film
    Country/TerritoryUnited Kingdom
    Date19/12/25
    DescriptionIn the last decade, Britain's nine-million-strong nighttime workforce has become increasingly reliant on migrants like Cristovao, as the number of UK-born workers doing night work shrinks.
    Producer/AuthorAkshata Kapoor
    URLhttps://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251219-we-are-ghosts-britain-s-migrant-night-workers
    PersonsJulius-Cezar Macarie