Are you Hungry or Danish? Migrant dishwashers in Copenhagen restaurants.

Abstract: This bachelor’s thesis is based on interviews with male migrants from South Asia working as dishwashers in Copenhagen restaurants. Throughout the text it is illustrated how the structural conditions affect the dishwashers and what strategies they use to react upon the structures. It is described how the dishwashers perceive their jobs, how they are employed and valued by the employers, and how their attitudes are towards the members of their social networks. This data is explored in the context of the theoretical framework regarding structure, social networks and social capital. Specific focus is put on the relevance of the structural conditions in the receiving country, their legal statuses, which laid the basis for a typology that emphasizes the division as well as the unity between the dishwashers. Additionally it is exemplified that the dishwashers make extensive use of their social networks and social capital to manage their everyday lives in the business of dishwashers. However, it is concluded that they by helping each other end up reproducing and recreating structural conditions. Subsequent it is argued that the dishwashers have a social hierarchy within their social networks, and that these social networks both have contradictions within them, and processes that tighten them.