Labour markets and employment

"In this project, we assess the impact of international migration, and the induced homecare services labour supply shock, on fertility decisions and labour supply of native females in Germany. Specifically, we consider individual data of native women for the years 1996-2012. The empirical analysis is based on two large data sets: the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) data combined with the Indikatoren und Karten zur Raumentwicklung (INKAR – Indicators and Maps on Spatial and Urban Development) data. This project adds to previous studies from several viewpoints. First, we focus on Germany and we perform a cross-regional analysis. This allows us to understand how migrants interact with the local labour market conditions. This is of particular importance as differences in participation, employment and unemployment rates across areas contribute to the significant variations in women’s labour supply behaviour and migrants assimilation on the labour market. Second, the German education system is characterized by an early track system, which could affect the performance on the labour market. For this reason, in the empirical analysis, we test whether the impact is stronger for (three) different skill levels. Finally, focusing on the behaviour of women, we contribute to the discussion about fertility rates in Germany, which has become an important issue for policy makers. One of the key point for our research question is to what extent the increase of female migrants in Germany has increased the availability of household services. One of the main difficulties with the empirical analysis of immigration is to address the potential endogeneity issues caused by the location choices of immigrants (since their distribution across areas is not random), and by measurement errors (due to undocumented migrants). To solve this problem, we exploit the tendency of migrants to move to areas with a large share of migrants of the same country of origin and use the past distribution of migrants across areas as an Instrument."

Europe is today facing several major challenges. These go beyond the future of the euro and the instability of the financial system to some of the underlying issues concerned with the work activities that underpin the European economy. How can Europe retain manufacturing and production as restructuring and relocation towards lower-wage costs economies gathers pace? As demographic change lifts the proportions of older workers in society and in employment, how can Europe both maintain decent levels of pensions and provide decent jobs for younger workers? As cross-border migration becomes ever easier how can migrant workers be fully integrated and accepted into the European labour market? How can aspirations for decent jobs be squared with the nearly pan-European progression of precarious work? Europe’s future depends in large part on the answers it can provide to these questions within the context of the vision of a competitive, technologically-innovative economy bolstered by a high road social model that was captured in the Europe 2020 strategy. The aim of the ChangingEmployment programme is to train a cross-European and interdisciplinary network of policy-focused social scientists comprehensively skilled in understanding, analyzing, and responding to social and institutional employment changes. Overall, it will: 1.Explore, societal differences, national variations in employees’ experiences of working life. 2.Examine historic and changing relations between management and employees. 3.Develop a comparative understanding of the changing quality of work, organisation and employment in the context of the (above) changes. 4.Consider patterns and consequences of workplace inclusion-exclusion in relation to migration, employment and unemployment, shifting inequalities in terms of gender and ethnicity and the implications for older employees of new patterns of work and retirement. 5.Assess impact of the current economic retrenchment on these forms of employment in Europe

The need to deal with health inequalities is now on the agenda of key supranational institutions, such as the European Commission (EC). To tackle the so-called “causes of the causes of health inequity”, the focus should be put on structural policies, policies that – especially in the current times of financial and employment crisis – influence patterns of social stratification, living and working conditions, and thus people's health. The SOPHIE project aims to generate new evidence on the impact and effectiveness of structural policies in reducing health inequalities, and to develop innovative methodologies for the evaluation of these policies in Europe. We will study major policy areas, including macro-economy, welfare state, labour market and employment relations, built environment, housing, as well as gender-oriented and immigration-related policies. Examples of these policies at the European, national and local levels will be examined, in addition to their impacts on health inequalities by social class, gender and migrant status. The project will develop theoretical frameworks as well as quantitative and qualitative methods for evaluating the effectiveness of such policies in different contexts. Novel methods that are useful for evaluating the impact of complex social interventions will be employed, including realist reviews, explanatory case studies and concept mapping. Particular attention will be given to increasing the involvement of affected stakeholders (civil society and deprived population groups) in the identification, design and evaluation of policies to tackle health inequalities. Affected communities and stakeholders will work with responsible policymakers in activities of dissemination of results, knowledge transfer and translation of findings into policy recommendations. Through SOPHIE, the EC will gain knowledge on the impact on health and health inequalities of social and economic policies which may be implemented or recommended to Member States

Since almost 150 years, Luxembourg depends on two kinds of migration, qualified and non-qualified, in order to deal with the workforce needs of its economy. Compared to the other EU Member States, Luxembourg is the country with the largest proportion of foreigners; however, this foreign population is mainly composed of EU citizens. Due to its size and geographic position, Luxembourg was able to have access to a very particular form of economic migration: cross-border workers. Globalisation has also played a decisive role in the development of economic migration for the Luxembourgish labour market. The financial centre was obliged to become highly specialised in order to remain competitive in regards to other financial centres and to maintain its volume of business. In order to maintain its competitive advantage, Luxembourg needs highly skilled personnel, which the country has found, up until now, within the Greater Region. This reality is even more pronounced with regards to the labour market: the number of actives (salaried and non-salaried) on 31 March 2014 shows that Luxembourgish nationals represented only 31%, EU citizens 65% and third-country nationals only 4%. Cross-border workers from Belgium, France and Germany represented 42% of the workforce and the resident migrant population (EU citizens and third-country nationals) 28%. Cross-border workers, which consist of skilled and highly skilled labour are substantially attracted for two reasons: 1) more competitive salaries on the Luxemburgish labour market ; and 2) a geographical location which allows the commuting of cross-border workers. The attitude of the successive governments was to adapt immigration to the economic needs of the country. The government policy intends to focus on attracting highly added value activities focussed on new technologies (biomedicine and information as well as communication technologies – focusing on IT security), logistics and research. However, being one of the smallest countries in the European Union, Luxembourg has limited human resources to guarantee the growth not only of the financial sector but also of the new technologies sectors. The government introduced the highly qualified worker residence permit in the bill on free movement of persons and immigration approved by law of 29 August 2008 almost a year before of the enactment of the Blue Card Directive to facilitate the entry of third-country national highly qualified workers. However, this reform was isolated and incomplete and took place without making a real evaluation of the workforce demand of the different sectors of the economy. Even though until now Luxembourg has been relying on the workforce from the Greater Region, for some socio-economic and political stakeholders, highly qualified workforces began to become scarce in the Greater region. In addition to the cross-border workers, the lifting of restrictions to access all the sectors of the labour market for citizens of the new Member States (EU-8) can be considered as a mitigating factor for the need to make an evaluation of the workforce demand, because the high salaries paid in Luxembourg became a real pull factor for the highly qualified workers. As a consequence, the political authorities did not foresee a systematic plan on how to address labour shortages in specific sectors of the economy, because there has not been a significant need for doing so.

The regularisation of irregular immigrants remains one of the main controversial policy options in regard to policies towards irregular migrants. While there is an increasing realisation that in some contexts regularisation may be an appropriate and necessary response to the sustained presence of irregular migrants, notably in humanitarian cases such as migrants who cannot be returned or who have family or other strong ties to their country of residence, opposition against regularisation remains strong, often based on principled considerations. However, very little is still known about wider impacts of regularisation, and in particular the impact of regularisation on those regularised. Objectives: The objectives of this feasibility study are threefold: • To determine the feasibility of conducting a comparative survey on the labour market performance of regularised immigrants in seven European countries; • To identify the best design for an empirical study of the labour market performance of regularised and irregular migrants and prepare draft tools for an implementation of the survey; • To provide tentative results on labour market trajectories of regularised migrants on the basis of exploratory qualitative research conducted in the course of the feasibility study. An earlier study conducted by ICMPD between 2007 and 2009 ( “Regularisations in Europe”, REGINE) had identified the overall extent of regularisation, the different forms, rationales and target groups of regularisation, while linking regularisation to the complex causes of irregularity, differing patterns of irregular migration and different overall policy responses to irregular migration across the EU. Yet as a study largely based on desk research and limited primary data collection amongst public authorities and other stakeholders, the study was unable to provide robust evidence regarding the wider impacts of regularisation, including the impact of regularisation on labour market trajectories of regularised migrants. The REGANE study sets out to address this gap. In its feasibility study phase, the study has three aims. First, it will assess the feasibility of conducting a quantitative survey amongst regularised and non-regularised migrants in 7 European countries; second, it will explore the best design for a quantitative empirical study of labour market trajectories of regularised migrants; and third it will undertake explorative qualitative research involving research with relevant experts, public authorities and migrants, thus not only preparing the ground for the implementation of the quantitative survey but also providing preliminary results regarding labour market trajectories of regularised migrants. The quantitative survey prepared through this feasibility study itself is planned to be implemented in a second phase of the project. It expected to provide the first systematic comparative assessment of individual level impacts of regularisation on those regularised in Europe.

"Long-term care systems are among the most recent expansions in Western welfare states. They aim at ensuring the provision of long-term care (LTC), which constitutes an expensive, personal social service and, due to predominantly female labour migration, creates transnational interdependencies. Western welfare states can be distinguished according to the extent to which their care policies and the care systems created by them support formal, informal or familial care and to what extent they recruit (predominantly female) domestic and/or migrant labour. On the other hand, the migration of care workers generates not only financial returns in the countries of origin but also familial care gaps and a shortage of qualified labour (""care drain""). This gives rise to new challenges for social policy which include drawing migrants from other countries and the creation of ""care chains"". In Europe, the migratory interdependencies relevant to social policy are primarily East-West internal migration, in South-East Asia they manifest themselves in terms of regional migration and South-North migration. Project B07 describes the introduction and expansion of long-term care with regard to service provision in selected countries and explains this process by considering the national constellation and transnational interdependencies produced by migration. In doing so we go beyond previous research in two respects: to explain country-specific arrangements of national long-term care policies and their characteristic ""care mixes"" we consider, firstly, for each national constellation the interrelations between long-term care policy and the policy areas of family, employment, education and training, and examine to what extent the profile of long-term care policy assumes and ensures the availability of labour for care activities. Secondly, in the analysis of the transnational migration of care workers we not only investigate the situation in the destination country but also in the countries of origin. In doing so, we can ascertain the pull and push factors for migration and include the socio-political effects of the care drain and the brain drain in the countries of origin. During the first phase, transnational interdependencies in Europe are investigated. With Germany, Italy and Sweden the choice of cases covers three West European countries with very different care systems and gender arrangements. We then selected Poland, Romania and Ukraine as three East European countries of origin that are integrated into the EU to varying degrees and in which care migration has very different effects on the emergence of further East-East migration. In the second phase of the CRC, the project will investigate to what degree the interdependencies arising through migration (beyond the maintenance of particular care systems in Western destination countries) have also led to a delayed development of corresponding systems in the Central and Eastern European countries of origin. In addition to the transregional dynamics in Europe, the LTC systems and mobility of care workers in South-East Asia will be investigated as well as the hitherto somewhat limited North-South mobility of people in need of care."

Data include statistics on trafficking (only trafficking for labour purposes, not including trafficking for the removal of organs, forced marriage, forced adoption…). ILO mainly focuses on the root causes of trafficking, especially weak labour market governance, ineffective labour migration and recruitment systems using media reports, reports from NGOs, GOs, IOs, academia, trade unions.