Labor Exploitation in Swedish Construction Chains

Photo by hisham hanif on Unsplash

Construction production is typically organized through project-based forms of production involving multiple layers of subcontracting. These organizational arrangements distribute work across a range of firms operating at different tiers of a project, while simultaneously dispersing responsibility for labor conditions. Within this fragmented organizational landscape, labor is frequently recruited through temporary agencies, cross-border postings, and various forms of subcontracted employment. Such arrangements shape how labor is incorporated into construction projects and influence the distribution of risk, responsibility, and working conditions across the sector.

These developments must be understood in relation to broader transformations in the organization of labor and the governance of migration. Construction is a particularly revealing sector because production is spatially fixed: buildings cannot be relocated, yet labor flexibility is achieved through complex contracting arrangements and the mobility of workers. Within these structures, migrant workers are often incorporated into the lower segments of subcontracting chains, where insecure employment relations intersect with temporary legal statuses and racialized labor market segmentation. Research has shown that border regimes play a central role in shaping these dynamics by regulating differential access to labor markets, rights, and social protections, thereby structuring how migrant labor is incorporated into particular sectors and employment arrangements.

This project examines how labor conditions and labor exploitation are produced, experienced, and governed within the Swedish construction industry. Rather than treating exploitation as the result of isolated violations of labor standards, the study approaches it as a structural phenomenon shaped by institutional arrangements, labor market structures, and migration regimes. In doing so, it situates the Swedish construction sector within a broader critical research tradition that emphasizes how border regimes and labor market institutions jointly structure the differential incorporation of workers into production processes.

The study combines insights from institutional logics theory and labor process theory to analyze these dynamics. Institutional logics theory highlights how different organizing principles, such as market competition, state regulation, and solidaristic labor relations, shape how actors interpret responsibility and respond to exploitative labor conditions. Labor process theory, in turn, centers the organization of work itself, examining how managerial strategies, subcontracting arrangements, and systems of oversight structure control over labor within production. Together, these perspectives enable analysis of how macro-level institutional configurations intersect with the everyday organization of work on construction sites.

Empirically, the project is structured around two interconnected case studies. The first focuses on construction workers and explores how they experience and navigate precarious labor conditions. Through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork, the study examines how workers respond to insecure income, unsafe working environments, and hierarchical labor relations within subcontracting chains. Particular attention is given to how socio-legal status, such as citizenship, temporary residence permits, posted work, or undocumented presence, shapes workers’ exposure to risk as well as their capacity to negotiate, adapt to, or resist exploitative conditions.

The second case study examines the institutional actors involved in governing labor conditions in the sector, including trade unions, civil society organizations, employer associations, companies, and policy stakeholders. Through interviews with representatives from these organizations, the study analyses how labor exploitation is understood, how responsibility is distributed across subcontracting structures, and how different actors attempt to intervene in problematic labor practices.

By analyzing the interaction between migration regimes, labor market organization, and workplace practices, the project contributes to critical scholarship on labor, migration, and inequality. It highlights how labor exploitation is shaped through the interplay of subcontracting structures, institutional arrangements, and border regimes that organize the differential incorporation of migrant labor into contemporary labor markets.

Project leader Sarah Philipson Isaac

The project is conducted within the broader research project Value Chains of Labor Exploitation, led by Principal Investigator Associate Professor Lin Lerpold and Professor Örjan Sjöberg. While the overarching project focuses primarily on governance structures and institutional responses to labor exploitation, this study examines how such dynamics unfold in the everyday organization of work and in workers’ experiences within the Swedish construction sector.