Romanian Migrant Workers in the German Construction Industry: A Study Based on Social Classifications Theory

Romanian migrant workers are employed on German construction sites under precarious and dangerous conditions, including 12-hour workdays, pay below the minimum wage, and a lack of occupational safety. Adopting an approach informed by the sociology of classifications, the project seeks to reconstruct, based on participant observation and interviews, the reasons why Romanian migrant workers are willing to work in Germany under conditions that some of them describe as slave labor.