A hole in the wall of fortress Europe: The trans‐European posting of third‐country labour migrants

Lens, Dries; Mussche, Ninke; Marx, Ive

doi:10.1111/imig.12867

Cited by 6 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 54 publications

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“…Underpayment, issues with social contributions, as well as substandard occupational safety and accommodation are the main issues reported about posted workers (Berntsen and Lillie, 2015;Danaj et al, 2020;Danaj and Kayran, 2022). These issues are evidenced primarily among workers whose posting, employment and migration statuses are either unclear and/or complex, which makes them dependent on their employers and often vulnerable to abuse (Alberti and Danaj, 2017;Cillo, 2021;Lens et al, 2022a;Novitz and Andrijasevic, 2020). Posting is an assignment rather than a separate job and workers should, in theory, already have a contractual relation with the sending employer.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The motility of posted workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: policies, trends and worker experiences in Austria

Danaj

Kayran

Geyer

2023

IJSSP

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PurposeTo analyse the policies, posting trends and worker experiences during the pandemic, this study uses the concept of motility, i.e. workers' mobility capital, and examines how posted workers' geographical mobility, their access to and conditions of employment and social protection were impacted. The authors discuss how the measures against the pandemic undertaken at the European Union (EU) and national level have affected labour mobility, the impact these measures have had on macro trends of posting to Austria, and lastly, how the pandemic and the actions against it have influenced the lives of posted workers at the individual level.Design/methodology/approachIn this article, the authors focus on the specific case of posting to Austria. The authors ask whether, and if so, how EU and national policies which came about during the COVID-19 pandemic influenced the motility of posted workers, and how these workers used their mobility capital in this unfolding context. The authors address the research questions with analyses of EU and national level policies, use administrative data on posting, and individual-level data based on interviews with posted workers and public authorities.FindingsThe authors find that the Austrian government's public health and economic priorities were jointly influential on the motility of cross-border workers. The specific case of the posted workers shed new light on the limits to such a national sovereignty approach when it comes to economic interests in an increasingly interdependent European labour market. This study’s findings show that despite the access provided at the policy levels, the motility of posted workers was also affected by their individual circumstances, or competences, which produced different forms of appropriation.Originality/valueThe authors apply the theoretical framework of motility by studying policy developments through the element of access options and conditions, and the posting trends to Austria and worker experiences at the individual level through the lenses of appropriation and competences. The authors find that while the EU and national public policy in enhancing access options have been successful during the COVID-19 period, amelioration attempts in access conditions have not been realised as observed in our analysis of the competence and appropriation dimensions of the posted workers in Austria. This highlights the need for a more integrated approach in the study of policies by exploring beyond the national and EU level policies and focussing on the implementation and observations at the individual level.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The motility of posted workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: policies, trends and worker experiences in Austria

Danaj

Kayran

Geyer

2023

IJSSP

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The quiet politics of migration supranationalization – Commission entrepreneurship and the intra-Corporate Transferee Directive

Hoffmeyer-Zlotnik

2023

Journal of European Integration

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Transgovernmental Labour Standards Enforcement in a Pan‐European Labour Market: An Arms Race Between Institutional Alignment and Regulatory Arbitrage

Lillie,

Brzozowska,

Kall

et al. 2024

J of Common Market Studies

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Transgovernmental co‐operation is an important European Union (EU) regulatory method, but it imposes transaction costs on the organizations involved. Regulatory requirements under conditions of European free movement drive transgovernmentalism, but transaction costs also shape transgovernmental regulation and regulatory outcomes. We investigate co‐operation around labour standards regulation for posted construction workers, focusing on bilateral co‐operation of labour inspectorates between Estonia and Finland and comparing it with co‐operation efforts between Poland and Finland, and Ukraine via Poland to Finland. The shifting patterns of labour mobility and employer efforts to recruit from less regulated sources mean that investment in bilateral relations can be undermined by the dynamic character of the pan‐European labour market. This article contributes to debates on EU regulatory governance by showing how transaction costs from co‐operation can decrease the effectiveness of transgovernmental network‐based governance; in the case of labour regulation, employers exploit this to undermine the effectiveness of labour inspection co‐operation.

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A hole in the wall of fortress Europe: The trans‐European posting of third‐country labour migrants

Cited by 6 publications

References 54 publications

The motility of posted workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: policies, trends and worker experiences in Austria

The motility of posted workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: policies, trends and worker experiences in Austria

The quiet politics of migration supranationalization – Commission entrepreneurship and the intra-Corporate Transferee Directive

Transgovernmental Labour Standards Enforcement in a Pan‐European Labour Market: An Arms Race Between Institutional Alignment and Regulatory Arbitrage

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