Prevailing socio-legal structures create a state of personhood limbo for undocumented workers, where broader society undermines various aspects of their personhood in a way that prevents them from fully representing and embracing all dimensions of their selves in and around the workplace. But how do undocumented workers cope with personhood limbo? Drawing on interviews with undocumented workers and civil society workers in Italy, we identify specific forms of what we call “personhood anchoring work” that undocumented workers engage in to claim aspects of personhood that are meaningful to them. Our theorization suggests that workers’ experiences of personhood are influenced not only by socio-legal structures, but also by their own agentic acts in response to external conditions, as well as their aspirations, past experiences, and future plans. A key finding of our study is that these practices do not aim to create or disrupt social orders, even in subtle or hidden forms of resistance. Instead, they enable undocumented workers to temporarily position themselves within the social order. In doing so, we also introduce a new way of conceptualizing the integration of undocumented workers that can account for the possibilities and limits of retaining rather than redefining personhood in the face of prevailing constraints.

中文翻译：

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应对人格困境：意大利无证工人的人格锚定工作

普遍存在的社会法律结构为无证工人创造了一种人格不稳定的状态，更广泛的社会破坏了他们人格的各个方面，从而阻止他们在工作场所及其周围充分代表和拥抱自我的各个方面。但无证工人如何应对人格困境呢？根据对意大利无证工人和民间社会工作者的采访，我们确定了所谓的“人格锚定工作”的具体形式，无证工人通过这些工作来主张对他们有意义的人格方面。我们的理论表明，工人的人格体验不仅受到社会法律结构的影响，而且还受到他们应对外部条件的能动行为以及他们的愿望、过去的经验和未来计划的影响。我们研究的一个重要发现是，这些做法的目的并不是创造或破坏社会秩序，即使是以微妙或隐藏的抵抗形式。相反，它们使无证工人能够暂时将自己置于社会秩序之中。在此过程中，我们还引入了一种概念化无证工人融入的新方法，该方法可以解释保留而不是在面临普遍限制时重新定义人格的可能性和局限性。