JUST MIGRATION: Labour Migration Regimes in transnationalised contexts

Conceptual Outline

Over the last decade, the EU and its Member States have intensified their efforts to attract labour migration, not least due to demographic change and the perceived needs of labour markets in a still globalizing economy. Attracting labour migrants – particularly but not exclusively highly skilled migrants – is a topic of high political priority and discursive salience. However, public discourse on how to organize and govern labour migration to the EU and its Member States is still very much dominated by a regulatory perspective that revolves around destination states’ considerations, is driven by the idea that law can seamlessly control and direct migration, and still conceptualizes migration as an exception rather than as a normal social process. This, however, does not reflect the dynamics and intricacies of migration movements, which are driven by a complex interplay between agency and structure in which migration decisions are shaped not only by laws, but also by migrants’ aspirations and capabilities. Nor does it take into account the fact that the governance of labour migration is significantly affected and potentially challenged by such broader societal transformations as digitalization, climate change, a changing international order, and the possibility of deglobalization.

Labour migration law today, therefore, cannot be adequately studied, fully understood, or critically assessed without considering the agency of migrants and the transnational dimension of migration, including the position of and conditions in migrants’ home countries, as well as structural global inequalities.

In the complex processes of labour migration, law plays an ambiguous role. On the one hand, law becomes ever more important as a regulatory tool, not only by tightening border controls, limiting access to visas, and securitizing migration, but also by creating new legal schemes and requirements for labour migration. On the other hand, rather than directly controlling or channelling labour migration, the law’s consequences on labour migration are often mediated and indirect. This is because law operates in a complex interplay of various commercial, economic, cultural, and technological variables that shape labour migration today. It involves a multitude of stakeholders, both public (countries of origin and destination) and private (migrants, employers, intermediaries), whose procedural roles and legal accountability are often not fully transparent. Recent years have also witnessed an increasing marketization of access procedures and the selection of migrants (through, e.g., the imposition of certain requirements). Among other things, this can increase the agency of private actors (migrants, employers, recruitment agencies). Labour migration thus involves an interplay between private and public interests embedded in larger societal transformations.

In this light, JUST MIGRATION:

1. explores how labour migration regimes are negotiated and shaped in the context of current social transformation and the degree to which migrants’ agency and country-of-origin perspectives are reflected therein;
2. examines how various stakeholders conceptualize “just” labour migration and what happens when these concepts are translated into law;
3. investigates how migrants navigate and use current labour migration law in the EU;
4. seeks to develop an analytical framework that allows for systematically taking into account migrants’ agency and a transnational perspective in the analysis and development of labour migration law.

Agency, Power, and Global Inequality

PhD project: Angélica Cocomá

This project examines how migrants from the Global South navigate labour migration regimes to assert their agency in European countries. Through ethnographic interviews with highly skilled migrant women from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, the project explores how migrants experience and navigate the legal regulation of labour migration and how this affects their social and professional lives. The project aims to develop a new theoretical understanding of agency in the context of labour migration law that can inform future scholarship on migration, international human rights law, and legal anthropology.

Transnational Dimensions in Labour Migration Lawmaking

PhD project: Katharina Ebner

Using the ongoing revision of the EU’s labour migration acquis as a case study, this project seeks to analyse how lawmakers conceptualise the transnational dimension of labour migration in law-making. While the perspectives of such third-party stakeholders as countries of origin and the migrants themselves are taken into consideration in the law-making process, it remains unclear how the transnational dimension is conceptualised and translated into concrete legislative outcomes. By combining legal analysis and anthropological research, the project will shed light on how EU labour migration laws and legal concepts are negotiated and the extent to which non-legal perspectives and narratives are considered.