Precarious Posted Worlds: Posted Migrant Workers in the Dutch Construction and Meat Processing Industries

Abstract

The posting of migrant workers has become an important employment channel for cross-border employment within the European Union (EU). Although posted workers are not formally excluded from labour rights, regulations are enacted in such a way that de facto they often are, as posted workers face many irregularities in their employment relations, while receiving hardly any protection from established representation and law enforcement authorities. Drawing on qualitative interview research in the Dutch construction and meat processing sector, this article shows how posted employment creates socio-economic precariousness for the workers involved. Although migrants in the meat sector have more opportunities to fight the exclusionary effects of posted employment because they usually reside for longer periods in the Netherlands than the more mobile migrants in construction, both groups of workers experience similar social and economic vulnerabilities, and a lack of protection mechanisms to change their precarious position.