Samenvatting

Based on qualitative research within Chinese restaurants in the Netherlands, the authors describe and discuss (informal) labour relations among Chinese restaurant owners and their illegal Chinese workers. It is argued that a too one-sided emphasis on interpreting these labour relations in terms of ‘labour exploitation’ reduces employers to offenders and employees to victims. Such a judicial perspective hinders a clear view on the causes of underlying themes as illegal labour and illegal stay. The authors discuss how restaurant owners and employees operate in a ‘moral economy’ in which a demand for cheap products and flexible, motivated, cheap, and capable labour interacts with culturally shared expectations on justice and reciprocity and influences labour relations.