Transcript East-West migration in the EU: Towards what kind of labour

Looking for ultimate flexibility:
East-West migration in the EU and
labour market uncertainty
Guglielmo Meardi
ESRC seminar on migrant workers
Norwich, 17 June 2010
A multi-level interpretative effort
• Structural approach to labour markets +
comparative analysis of actors reactions
• Country of origin determinants, e.g. PL, LV
• Country of destination determinants, e.g. UK
• Sector specificities, e.g. construction in UK, E
Link new migration – uncertainty (Crouch 2008)
G. Meardi ‘Where Workers Vote with Their Feet’
(2010) + ongoing project on UK & Spain
Context: East
• Social failures of EU integration, despite economic and geopolitical
successes:
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
–
Workers as ‘losers’ in relative and sometimes absolute terms
Strong dissatisfaction with working conditions (EWCS, qualitative research)
Extreme marketization
Residual legacy welfare state does not protect today’s workforce
Continuous weakening of unions, faster than in EU15
Perverse transfer of the ‘social acquis’
Increased social pressure stemming from competition for FDI, Maastricht
Disappointment with EU promise, populism
• Do you remember?
‘most people were ‘better off’, but they had suffered and continued to suffer this
slight improvement as a catastrophic experience’
(E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 1966, p212)
Poverty risk by age (Eurostat)
35
30
25
0>17
20
18-64
>65
15
10
5
0
HU
PL
EE
EU25
Context: West
• EU’s ‘almost desperate structural need, in both
demographic and labour force terms, for increased intraEuropean population movements’ (Favell 2008)
• 20 years of admiration for US immigration-driven growth
• 10 years of longing for flexicurity, but reforms are politically
costly (Germany, Italy, France)
• Financial crisis: flexicurity myth dismantled, contradiction
between need for secure consumers and need for flexible
workers
• Wages already constrained by EMU, social pacts, deunionisation: traditional Marxist explanation (Castles and
Kossack) insufficient
Migrants as the solution of the uncertainty problem?
Pros and cons…
Pros:
• Adaptability, mobility, long hours,
sensitive to $/€
• Less sensitive to prestige
• They don’t vote
NMS additional pros:
• White and Christian
• Extremely high activity rate (78%
vs 67%)
• Extreme mobility: they go home
when not needed
• Potential solution to trilemma:
migrants’ segregation / good
ethnic relations / border control
Cons:
• Need to be ‘temporary’ and
replaced often
• Need not be integrated socially
• Social costs for migrants
themselves (hidden suffering)
NMS additional con:
• EU-wide migration policy?
• EU limits to selective social
policies
=> More or less feasible for intra-EU
migration?
The realities of intra-EU mobility
All forecasts wrong:
• Boeri/Brücker 2000, UK Home Office: no worry, nothing new
 2m, not 1m (Boeri/Brücker) arrivals in EU, 200,000/y, not 15,000/y
(Home Office) in UK
• Sinn/Ochel 2003, Kvist 2004: threat to welfare states, ‘social raids’
 Very high activity rate, very little social burden
Lessons:
• Evidence of disregard for social factors
• Do not extrapolate regardless of context!
• New: ‘Transnationalism’, erosion of distance
• ‘Mobility’ rather than ‘migration’
Post-2004 developments
• EC enthusiasm (2006, 2008): complementarity,
growth, tax revenue, pension funding, inflation
control
€€€
• Race to opening in most EU countries (except A,
D) following UK/Ireland success (not the bottom
– another wrong forecast by Boeri/Brücker)
• Little effects on local wages (-0.09% if you still
trust Brücker)
Skilled, unskilled or deskilled?
• LFS: 1% of EU15 workforce, but 1.9% of
elementary occupations and 0.1% in skilled
occupations
• But higher qualifications than EU average!
• Mechanisms of deskilling, brain drain,
especially on female careers (Currie 2008)
Countries of origin
• Extreme case of ethnic minorities in Estonia, Latvia,
Romania, Czech Republic
– Emigration as political ‘safety valve’ (Piore 1979)
– ‘Exit’ following lack of ‘voice’ for ‘grey passport’ Russian
speakers of LV, EE
• Exit for dissatisfaction with jobs/job offers/welfare
– Eurobarometer: 59% for income, 57% for working
conditions
– Inverse association migration – welfare (especially
sickness, family and unemployment benefits)
– Voting with their feet?
Link exit-voice?
Unionisation, %,
03-08
Emigration,
%, 03-07
Unionisation,
(000) 03-08
Emigration
(000) 03-07
LT
-34.1
2.3
-62
-75
SK
-34.1
2.0
-196
-88
EE
-18.4
0.8
-8
-10
BG
-16.2
1.9
-94
-144
PL
-16.1
1.9
-340
-721
LV
-15.8
0.8
-27
-18
CZ
-14.9
0.3
-77
-33
HU
-9.3
0.4
-80
-41
SI
+2.6
0.0
+9
0
RO
+4.2
4.7
+85
-1,000
r = -.7174
Self-reinforcing or self-defeating
process?
• Mobility lowers unionisation (e.g. Poles in the West Midlands: 10% in PL,
3% in UK)
• Estimates: exit of >10% workforce in LV, LT, RO, >5% in PL, SK (EU15 crossborder mobility: 2%)
• Labour shortages: wage concessions, concentrated in high-emigration
countries and sectors (2004-06: +89% in SK, +60% in CZ; +118% in LV,
+100% in EE; +26% in €-zone)
• But not related to collective bargaining (lowest coverage in the Baltic
states, great wage drift)
• Some evidence of union regained assertiveness, but no revitalisation:
Strikes in Poland (days):
2004
400
2005
3300
2006
31400
2007
186200
2008
275800
• Political reactions: retention measures by Polish government
• Social costs: 110,000 ‘Euro-orphans’ in Poland, European care chain
An extreme case: Latvia
• An hyper-neoliberal vicious cycle:
Most regressive social system
=> high mobility
=> non-productive investment
=> bubble
=> collapse (house prices 2009: -70%)
=> even more ECB- and IMF-dependent
=> cuts in nominal wages by 15-27%
=> new boost to migration (+24% into the UK in
2009, while -54% from the other NMS)
=> …
Host countries: a new spectre haunting Europe
UK example
• Bank of England, employers’ enthusiasm
• Government enthusiasm… until 2008
Home Office, 2006: ‘the more favourable work ethic of migrant workers
had the effect of encouraging domestic workers to work harder’
• Until only 5% of NMS workers apply for child benefits, <1% for
unemployment benefits
• Little effect on wages, unemployment, but growing ‘fear of
unemployment’
• 39% find job via agencies (UK nationals: 4%)
• 53% temporary contracts (UK nationals: 6%)
• Interviews: migrants decisively negative view of TWAs
• Biggest disruptions from movement of services, posted workers
UK-Germany parallel paths
UK
• Open borders
• Liberal labour market
 TWA
 Temporary contracts
 Residual welfare and pressure to
leave as soon as unemployed
 high employment rate
 5,000 (?) posted workers
Germany
• Closed borders
• Corporatist, unevenly covered
labour market
 Less employment migration
 Seasonal work programs
 Very high self-employment, also
in factories, agriculture, care
 22,500 NMS-owned companies
set up in 2004-06
 133,000 posted workers, also
within factories
 Extreme, hard to control cases of
exploitation
Crisis
• Concentration in the most affected sectors
(construction, manufacturing, travel-related
services)
• Eurostat: unemployment up more among non-EU
nationals (+2%) than EU nationals (+0.5%) in 4Q
2008
• Ireland again an emigration country, but ‘any sad
new song should be in Polish’ (Irish Independent):
-30,100 NMS citizens in a year
– NMS’ citizens in Ireland: 6% of workforce, 24% of job
losses (Central Statistics Office, 2009)
The construction case
• Seasonality, volatility, mobility and risk
• Spain and UK: major bubble in the 2000s,
largest increase in immigration, painful burst,
differently flexible labour markets
• UK: mostly from Poland, Lithuania
• Spain: mostly from Romania, + Latin America,
Morocco
Job losses, 2009: Spain vs UK
SPAIN
Nationals
Foreigners
UK
Nationals
Foreigners
Economy
-7%
-14%
Economy
-0.9%
-4.3%
-64%
Construction -4%
Construction -23%
-8%
Note: National Migrants Survey in Spain, but only (migration-underestimating) LFS
data in the UK
Labour market reactions
Spain:
- Large share of undocumented
migration
- Mostly SME (second home) sector
- Stronger self-employment
regulations, collective bargaining
- Rare foreign providers
- Segregation within companies
 No exclusionary option, strong union
inclusiveness but low diversity
awareness; strong unionisation of
Latin Americans
 Problems of guaranteeing
appropriate collective agreement
UK:
- Large share of self-employment,
agencies, foreign contractors
- More fragile collective bargaining
- Small-large site dichotomy
- Regional differences
- Segregation by sub-sector and
company
 Union inclusiveness but some
exclusionary tones, tensions, esp. in
the North
 Problems of wage transparency,
agencies, posted workers, job grading
 ‘Variety of non-compliance’ rather
than ‘variety of
regulations/capitalism’
H&S implications
• Frequent reporting, but little evidence, of worse H&S for
migrants (overall decline of accident in the UK, stagnation
in Spain)
• Frequent mentions of job mobility, language, inexperience,
segregation as risk factors
• Increased risk in countries of origin (PL)
• Crisis: ‘positive’ effects on accidents, but likely higher risk
when growth restarts
• UK: stronger effort in providing H&S training to foreign
speakers
• Spain: ‘yes, well, but if they have arrived here and live here,
then they must understand something’ (employer);
‘training may have contrary effects’ (inspector)
Conclusion
• ‘Exit’ as typical market behaviour and response to
liberal project and socio-political failure (‘voice’)
in NMS and at EU-level
• Ambivalent link between exit and voice:
alternative in the short term, but oscillating
historically
• Intra-EU mobility: quasi-solution to the trilemma,
but crisis, socialisation and ‘voice’ disrupt it: even
in the optimal conditions of NMS mobile workers,
the homo economicus doesn’t really exist