Access to the European Labor Market for Immigrant Women in the Wake of the COVID Pandemic

Abstract

Economic crises and instability during the COVID pandemic have led to a significant additional workload and uncertainty for women. The COVID virus has spread extremely rapidly, and mobility and migration are severely limited, at least in the short term. The virus has a significant impact on the health of people from those considered to be migrants and refugees and their access to the labor market. According to Eurostat, 1.4 million people who previously resided in an EU Member State migrated to another Member State, and almost half of this population are women. Migrating women are particularly exposed to a number of specific consequences of the pandemic. Migrant women are disproportionately the first to be laid off and the last to be rehired. This is due to gender discrimination and precarious working conditions, such as low wages, the greater burden of care work, and alternative employment costs, especially given the gender wage gap and the difficulty of accessing the formal economy. This study examines the challenges many migrant women experienced in accessing the Eurozone labor market during the COVID pandemic. Based on this primary objective, the theoretical perspective of this research relies on the segmented labor market theory. Within the framework of documentary research, this work has chosen the path of descriptive analysis to achieve the study’s objectives. The findings presented in an intersectional framework suggest that the impact on migrant women workers during the COVID pandemic is exacerbated by a segmented labor market rooted in a capitalist context and by gendered structures of racism in the European labor market. In a capitalist context, migrant women would be over-represented in the informal economy due to segmented labor market policies and the effects of gendered racism. As a result, they would be at the forefront of redundancies during the pandemic because of their difficulty accessing the European labor market.