Labour Migration in the European Union: Recent Trends and Future Prospects

Abstract

Migration, and in particular labour migration, has been approached from many different perspectives. Although it has been a subject of research for decades, in recent years it has become an ever more complex and dynamic phenomenon attracting rising interest of scholars from different fields. Nowadays there are over 86 million migrant workers in the world, a fact that has made labour migration a priority issue on the political agendas of most countries. In the European Union, labour migration flows have recently increased because of the freedom of movement of workers in the area. In addition, three key factors will continue to prompt labour migration in the near future: the ‘pull’ of demographic changes and the subsequent labour market shortages; the ‘push’ of population growth, unemployment and crises in least-developed countries; and, finally, the networks established among origin and destination countries on the basis of familial and cultural ties.This chapter analyses the labour-related aspects of migration. First, we provide a theoretical overview of the labour migration phenomenon. Next, we analyse labour migration in the European Union as a whole. Drawing on data from the European Labour Force Survey we examine the evolution of the migrant working-age population over the period 1995–2017 distinguishing between its participation in the labour force and in total employment. Then, we carry out an in-depth study of migrant employment in the five European countries that account for three-quarters of the migrant working-age population, namely, Germany, France, Spain, the United Kingdom, and Italy. Special attention is paid to origin and gender differences. The results obtained reveal that migration is a key phenomenon in European labour markets and is expected to acquire greater relevance in the coming years. Moreover, the differential features of labour migration in each country necessitate the implementation of specific integration policies that guarantee the efficient functioning of the labour markets.KeywordsGenderIntegration policiesLabour migration