IRREGULAR MIGRANTS IN TIMES OF HEIGHTENED PRECARITY. COMPARATIVE DYNAMICS OF LIVED EXPERIENCE AND AGENCY AMONG DOMESTIC AND FOOD SERVICE WORKERS IN MILAN AND NEW YORK CITY.

Objective

UNDERPRECAR analyses how deportability-induced precarity influences the lived experience and agency of irregular migrants under shifting and increasingly contrasting migration regimes. Through a comparative ethnography in Milan (Italy) and New York City (USA), it focuses on domestic work and food service—sectors marked by informality and a high reliance on migrant labour—and adopts a gender-sensitive lens. The objectives are: (1) to trace legislative, administrative, and enforcement trajectories at national and urban levels and assess their consequences for deportability-induced precarity; (2) to document how this condition is experienced in everyday life—namely, how it intersects with other forms of precarity, its implications for vulnerability and well-being, and how it is interpreted and conceptualised by migrants themselves; (3) to map individual and collective repertoires of agency, through which migrants navigate deportability-induced precarity, accounting for variation across migration regimes, economic sectors, and gender. The methodology combines document analysis; 30 interviews with civil-society actors, officials and experts; 80 in-depth interviews with migrants (40 per city, split across sectors); participatory diaries and photo-voice with 20 co-researchers; and sustained participant observation. Triangulated analysis will generate open-access datasets and publications, policy briefs and co-produced public outputs. Aligned with the priorities of the MSCA Work Programme, the project will deliver socially engaged research, while equipping the fellow with advanced methodological, open-science and ethics training through international mobility across the City University of New York, Toronto Metropolitan University and the University of Milan.