Almost 14 million European citizens currently live or work in another Member State. The European Union makes it possible for everyone to work and live in another Member State. The smooth functioning of labour mobility requires clear and understandable information, strong cross-border cooperation and proper enforcement of labour mobility rules. This is where ELA comes in.
This book brings together the expertise of economists, legal scholars, political scientists, and sociologists in order to integrate diverse perspectives and a broad range of analytical tools in the conceptualisation of labour mobility. It examines how variably the question of labour mobility has translated into the policies, laws, and norms through which the EU as a whole is governed. The contributions focus on the actors – European and national officials, experts, trade union and employers’ organisations – and on instruments implemented by institutions and political organisations – European Agency, coordination systems, European Job Mobility Portal (EURES) – to increase and support mobility within the European Union. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of European/EU studies, migration studies, labour studies, political sociology, and more broadly to comparative politics.
The economic crisis has caused a surge in intra-European labour mobility, unleashing heated debates about the consequences of large-scale labour migration. This volume improves understanding of the drivers, mechanisms, and effects of the past decade’s surge in cross-border labour mobility and work related migration within Europe.
If well managed, migration generates benefits for migrants, their countries of origin and the countries they settle in. For migrants, it can help them expand their skill sets and improve their standard of living. For destination countries, it can alleviate demographic pressures and foster cultural diversity. For origin countries, it can bring benefits associated with remittances and knowledge transfers. However, in reality, these benefits are rarely achieved, as migration policy failures frequently lead to suboptimal or even negative outcomes. Realizing the full potential of migration therefore demands we foster a paradigm shift toward the fair management of migration. Fair migration is driven by the desire to achieve a triple-win for migrants, destination countries and origin countries. In addition to outlining the key challenges and opportunities associated with fair migration, this volume examines the good practices of a variety of countries and institutions which highlight aspects of fair migration. The volume concludes with policy recommendations for effective and fair migration policymaking at the national and international levels. As a conceptual and empirical contribution to both national and international debates on managing migration, this volume aims to enrich discussions among policymakers, business leaders, civil society actors and scholars alike.
The debate on the free movement of labour within the EU has gained new momentum in the wake of the economic crisis. Building on the earlier Ashgate publication EU Labour Migration Since Enlargement, the editors have assembled a team of experts from across Europe to shed light on the critical issues raised by internal labour mobility within the EU in the context of economic crisis and labour market pressures. The book's chapters tease out the links between economic developments, regulatory frameworks and migration patterns in different European countries. A central focus is on issues of skills and skills mismatch and how they relate to migration forms, duration and individual decisions to stay or return. Based on detailed analysis of European and national-level sources, the results presented clearly contradict assumptions about a "knowledge driven migration". Rather, over-qualification and the corresponding underutilisation of migrant workers' skills emerge as a pervasive phenomenon. At the same time the characteristics of migrants - not just skills, but socio-demographic characteristics and attitudes - and also their labour market integration are shown to be very diverse and to vary substantially between different sending and receiving countries. This calls for a differentiated analysis and raises complex issues for policymakers. Examples where policy has contributed to positive outcomes for both migrants and domestic workforces are identified. Unique in analysing labour migration flows within the European Union in a comparative manner putting skills into the centre and taking account of the effects of the economic crisis, while addressing policy concerns this is a valuable resource for academics, policymakers and practitioners alike.
How the European Union handles posted workers is a growing issue for a region with borders that really are just lines on a map. A 2008 story, dissected in Ines Wagner’s Workers without Borders, about the troubling working conditions of migrant meat and construction workers, exposed a distressing dichotomy: how could a country with such strong employers’ associations and trade unions allow for the establishment and maintenance of such a precarious labor market segment? Wagner introduces an overlooked piece of the puzzle: re-regulatory politics at the workplace level. She interrogates the position of the posted worker in contemporary European labour markets and the implications of and regulations for this position in industrial relations, social policy and justice in Europe. Workers without Borders concentrates on how local actors implement European rules and opportunities to analyze the balance of power induced by the EU around policy issues. Wagner examines the particularities of posted worker dynamics at the workplace level, in German meatpacking facilities and on construction sites, to reveal the problems and promises of European Union governance as regulating social justice. Using a bottom-up approach through in-depth interviews with posted migrant workers and administrators involved in the posting process, Workers without Borders shows that strong labor-market regulation via independent collective bargaining institutions at the workplace level is crucial to effective labor rights in marginal workplaces. Wagner identifies structures of access and denial to labor rights for temporary intra-EU migrant workers and the problems contained within this system for the EU more broadly.
Labour mobility creates economic benefits for the EU at large and the mobile workforce. The same can be said for the special case of posted workers--a form of labour mobility that is crucial to the functioning of the internal market for services. Moreover, the number of posted workers is set to grow if the single market is further deepened. However, regulating the crossborder posting of workers--and ensuring a notion of 'fair mobility'--also epitomises the inherent difficulties in squaring the differences of 28 different sets of labour market regimes and regulations with the freedom to provide services in situ. In addition, the regulation has to work effectively in countries with large differences in income levels and social policies. We review the state of play with regard to posted workers and spell out the trade-offs involved to be kept in mind when considering the targeted revision of the posted workers Directive.
Bulletin of Comparative Labour Relations Volume 108 The progressive expansion of the phenomenon of posting of workers – the practice whereby a worker is sent for a limited period of time to another Member State in order to provide a service – is a formidable bone of contention in the conflict between a fully integrated internal market economy and Member States’ aims to protect domestic social standards. This book challenges the recently adopted Directive (EU) 957/2018, which came into effect in July 2020, by examining the relevant EU regulatory framework and investigating the actual quantitative dimension of the posting phenomenon and its real impact on the EU labour market. In the process, the author exposes a serious misalignment of the legal framework provided for by the new Directive with the EU values and principles of equality, solidarity and fair competition. Drawing on a wide variety of sources – including Court of Justice case law, Advocate Generals’ opinions, Eurostat data, Commission documents and reports, and academic literature – the author provides in-depth analyses of such elements of the problem as the following: proper definition of the concepts of ‘posting’ and ‘posted worker’ in EU law; host country’s discretion in relation to the part of domestic regulation it can impose on posted employees; misconceived clash between social rights and economic freedoms; coordination of national social security systems; proliferation of unlawful and fraudulent practices; ‘regime shopping’ and exploitation of existing regulatory loopholes; misleading association of posting with issues of ‘social dumping’ and ‘unfair competition’; orientation of political influence during the drafting process of relevant EU legislation; expected controversial economic impact of Directive (EU) 957/2018; concrete realisation of the EU values and principles of equality, solidarity and fair competition; and definition and pursuit of a ‘European social model’. Normative arguments developed in the course of the analysis put forward viable recommendations for future improvements in the field. The Union’s commitment to the development of a ‘European social model’ cannot avoid taking into account the matters of equality, solidarity and fair competition. In this sense, given the increasing prominence of the free movement of services in shaping a European labour market characterised by an ever-growing degree of mobility, this book’s analysis of the phenomenon of posting of workers may serve as a litmus test of political and legislative action at EU level. In its dual analytic and normative aspect, the book takes a giant step towards future discussions and developments in the area of intra-EU labour mobility. It will be welcomed by legal practitioners in labour and social security law and industrial relations, legal scholars, EU institutions and agencies, businesses and trade unions.
Academic Paper from the year 2012 in the subject Politics - Topic: European Union, grade: 1,4, Hertie School of Governance, course: EU Economic Governance, language: English, abstract: With the right of free movement across borders being granted to all EU citizens, why do European workers remain locally bound even in times of crises? This question has given rise to a large number of studies and discussions on existing barriers to labor mobility which have persisted despite the legal freedoms. The goal if this essay is threefold: it will identify the most critical barriers, show via which mechanisms these barriers can be lowered, and assess for which barriers the EU, considering its capacities and those of Member States and conforming to the subsidiarity principle, can have the greatest direct impact on lowering them. While the essay will not directly evaluate the effectiveness of previous EU policies targeted towards increasing labor mobility, it will show in which areas increased efforts by the EU can transform into tangible results in the most efficient way. The essay proceeds in the following way: In the first section, it recaps the economic rationale underlying the importance of labor mobility in a monetary union. In the second section, it shows which patterns of labor mobility can currently be observed in the EU. Section three introduces the four key barriers that constrain labor mobility in the EU, and section four outlines through which mechanisms these barriers can be addressed and provides the assessment of the EU’s impact on lowering them.
