Foreign national workers experiences of violence and vulnerability in the Night Time Economy (NTE) of a British city.

A wealth of extant literature on the night time economy (NTE) has predominately focussed on research that has examined confrontation, criminal behaviour and interpersonal violence (Winlow and Hall 2006). However, the expansion of the NTE has also included a concomitant increase in the numbers of fast food outlets and taxi services, constituting an area of the NTE that has remained largely at the periphery of criminological interest. Alongside this, ‘race’ discourses have established a large body of work around the experiences of racist victimisation amongst BME groups (Bowling and Phillips 2007). How this intersects with the NTE has also remained relatively untouched. This paper presents findings from a study that examined the lived experiences of foreign nationals and migrants who occupy the fast food and taxi workforce in a British city. The paper reveals that experiences of violence are widespread and can be conceptualised within a framework that unpacks racism and discrimination within a broader climate of geopolitical tensions and a context of consumer culture and economic structures that places these workers in a position of vulnerability.