Global migration, public order, and collective bargaining operating on borders

Abstract

1. Europen Union is now facing the problem of migration of workers with an unprecedent urgency since its establishment. There is need to reflect over the role that collective bargaining, as a major source of regulation, shall play along the other sources called to cope with such a phenomenon. Therafter, a focus is set over the political nature of collective bargaining, which, theoretically, could be neutral rather than taking on political responsabilities. As an ILO study clearly put it: "Labour migration is now a major arena for the struggle between labour and capital over the division of wealth, the extent of regulation (or deregulation) of working conditions and worker protection, and the ability of workers to organize themselves into unions. What happens to migrant workers may well be the precedent for what happens more widely across working populations"1 .Many European countries are now adopting temporary measures to cope with the urgency of big migrations that are mainly coming by from the Middle East and North Africa and that are serioulsly stressing the European legal frame over migrations (particularly, the principle of free movement as provided by the Schengen treaty), which is in the power of national states according to the international legal frame ruling refugees since 1951 2 as I am going to report here below.Yet in 2008 more than 191 million migrants, including migrant workers, refugees, asylum-seekers, permanent migrants and others, live and work in a country other than that of their birth or citizenship; the ILO calculated that about 95 million of them have moved