A normative and legal analysis of the convergence of labour and migration policies: impacts on migrant workers, undocumented workers, refugees, and asylum seekers in the European Union

Abstract

This thesis's research considers a normative understanding of EU migration policy in tandem with the practice of labour rights for migrant workers, refugees and asylum seekers, and undocumented workers. The reason to uncover the relationship between labour rights for migrant workers and migration comes from the persisting incidences of exploitation in the EU that affect non-EU citizens exponentially more than EU workers. Understanding why this trend occurs and what systems are in place to prevent it is crucial today and requires moral and legal assessment. The first half of the research places the EU's approach to labour migration in normative contexts. The case for Open Borders migration, based on the work of Joseph Carens, posits an egalitarian liberal ideology seemingly emulated by the border-free EU regime. However, the fortification of the EU external border and increasing securitization of the EU represent the ideas of Christopher H Wellman's right of association. Although oppositional, it is only in tandem that we may understand the EU's labour policies differentiating non-EU workers. The second half of the research focuses on how the current practice of sponsored work permits, employer's sanctions, migration policy filters, transnational guest worker schemes, and exploitation and trafficking prevention schemes all impact labour rights for migrant workers. The findings show that economic self-interest and historical colonial relations cause migrant workers to live and work in precarity and residential insecurity and face significant discrimination. Low-skilled, low-wage employment and ethnic economies significantly have heightened risks of exploitation by the shadow economy, the informal sector, and state regulation.