The eu Seasonal Workers Directive: When Immigration Controls Meet Labour Rights

Abstract

The Seasonal Workers Directive combines immigration law, which regulates entry and stay in a territory, with labour law, which governs the rights of workers. The different interests and expertise of the various eu institutions involved in the Directive’s drafting and adoption exacerbated the tension between these two legal fields. In turn, this tension compromised the achievement of several of the eu’s explicit objectives, namely, creating a level playing field for the recruitment of seasonal migrant workers across the Member States, instituting a circular migration program, and protecting migrant workers from economic and social exploitation. This article focuses on the extent to which the Directive has the capacity to protect seasonal migrant workers. To do so, it sketches the history of the Directive and discusses some consequences of its treaty basis, which provides the context for our analysis and evaluation of the substantive provisions of the Directive.