Intersecting Hierarchies of Nightwork

It explores first hand, the significance of the intersecting hierarchies that segregate nightworkers at New Spitalfields night market. Corporation of London is at the top of this structural pyramid, as its overarching owner and manager. Analysing each level down, the chapter scrutinises the roles of tenants and trading companies, with its owners and executives on the highest level, and the loaders on the lowest level. These hierarchies are intersected by further hierarchies constituted along the lines of ethnicity, nationality, class, and gender. There are other hierarchies, too—those that oppose the individuals who are in control of their sleep and work time and the individuals who must tame their bodies’ in need for sleep and rest. In this chapter, therefore, I bring to the forefront the role that ethnicised labour has in dis-/forming the experiences of these migrant workers who converge on the grounds of New Spitalfields market as their workplace.