Normalisation, acknowledgement, or endorsement? Conceptualising Polish migrants’ attitudes to exploitation in low-paid sectors in the UK

This article analyses how post-2004 Polish migrants in the UK narrate and evaluate exploitative labour conditions in low-paid sectors in the period preceding the 2016 Brexit referendum. Based on 41 semi-structured interviews with Polish-identifying adults working in cleaning, hospitality, care, food production/manufacturing, construction, delivery and retail, it identifies three types of narrative orientations: acknowledgement (naming exploitation and estrangement), normalisation (framing inequalities as expected or temporary), and endorsement (recasting hardship as formative for self-development and mobility). Read in dialogue with Marxian alienation, Gramscian consent, and Foucauldian subjectification, the typology demonstrates how similar constraints can be contested, endured, or made meaningful.