Motivation is high among all stakeholders for migrants to begin contributing to their host society as quickly as possible, and a common fear is that their lack of legal status has often prevented them from joining the labor force and putting their skills to use, especially in the kind of secure jobs that most people crave.

Alas, a new study from Anglia Ruskin University suggests even that might not be sufficient to provide migrants with secure work.  The researchers interviewed a few hundred migrants from across Europe to explore their experience with regularization, which is the process through which migrants obtain legal right to work, and specifically how this affects their work opportunities and conditions.

The analysis revealed that 90% of migrants worked in the primary sector, with many of them struggling with employers behaving poorly, with things such as not declaring their work hours to the authorities commonplace.  These issues were especially prevalent in industries such as construction, agriculture and cleaning.

Unattractive environment

Few migrants who had gone through the regularization process were willing to work in the informal sector because they found employers preferred people who were undocumented so they could bypass employment laws.  Some did choose informal work however, both for the freedom it provided but also because it made it easier to avoid paying tax.

The regularization process itself also presented a number of issues, not least due to the endorsement required by the employer, which creates an unequal power dynamic in the relationship between them and the migrant.  Many respondents revealed that this resulted in them being unable to challenge the employer when they flouted labor laws.

“Around 40 regularisation programmes have been implemented in Europe and the United States, and more than five million people have been regularised since the 1980s,” the researchers explain.  “Our study found that while immigration policy does play a part in determining the rights of an individual, the labour markets themselves play a crucial role in creating spaces for undocumented workers to live and work in a country.”

Sadly, the prevailing narrative often seems to place the blame for these dysfunctional labor market practices on migrants rather than employers, and as such policies fail to support people who seek nothing more than to live their lives as normally and as fairly as possible.