Essential and disposable: racial capitalism and Polish migrant workers

Covid-19 exacerbated existing global racial inequalities, deepening already precarious lives of many racialised migrant workers and pushing them further into vulnerability in the UK labour market. In this paper, we analyse primary data collected as part of a mixed-method study on migrant essential workers in the UK, focusing on the Polish community. This paper extends the scope of theoretical applications of racial capitalism to Eastern Europe to better understand how the lives of Polish essential workers, as both Eastern Europeans and migrant workers, are shaped by hierarchies, marginalisation and exclusion in the workplace. We argue that Polish migrant workers are expected to occupy, and remain within, a distinct role in the UK economy as able indestructible bodies and are disciplined for any attempts to move up, across or to challenge their allotted role within this racialised system.

© 2026 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
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