Migrants and Labour Markets - Cluster Overview
The skills and labour of migrants are often promoted as of significant benefit to national economies. Yet there is also anxiety both at potential displacement of citizens from labour markets and the exploitation of migrants in low-wage sectors. Considerations of migrant labour bring to the fore the political construction of who counts as a migrant worker. This has implications for research methods and analysis as well as for policy. Research in this area critically examines the construction of migrant labour, the demand for migrant labour, and the position of migrant workers in labour markets. It aims to:
- understand the role of migration in the economics, politics and sociology of labour markets at the macro and micro levels, both empirically and conceptually.
- examine the relation between migration and ‘precarious work’, locating this both within debates on trafficking and the broader context of low-wage labour and groups that are marginalised in labour markets.
Current and future work at COMPAS will investigate the link between labour and skills shortages, economic change and labour demand, immigration and public policy. Increasingly, there is a focus within policy development on making labour migration policy responsive to the changing needs of the labour market. In the UK and in other countries there is a move towards using research to help identify shortages in the labour market and to assess the implications for labour immigration policy (see, for example, the work of the UK’s independent Migration Advisory Committee on which COMPAS is represented). COMPAS research on employer demand is therefore directly relevant to discussions within the national, European and international arenas. The economic downturn restructures labour markets and opens new debates about the scale and form of demand for labour migration. It also amplifies old concerns about the interplay of migrant rights and labour markets. Already COMPAS has contributed academic evidence and public debate in this policy area and will continue to do so in future.
Core strands of work include:
The economics, politics and sociology of labour and skills shortages: Cluster work explores the nature and determinants of labour shortages, the perceived demand for migrant labour and the structural dependence of high- and middle-income economies on the availability of cheap migrant labour. In particular we examine the feasibility and desirability of alternatives to immigration.
Migration and precarious labour: Research within the cluster moves beyond the notion of illegality as a reason for migrant vulnerability to examine state and social constructions of labour markets and ‘workers’/’employees’, with attention to the employment relation that such constructions imply. It explores how these constructions constrain and facilitate migrants, and the dynamic inter-relationship between immigration controls and precarious labour.
The relation of time to experiences of migration: Cluster research explores how immigration statuses shift over time, and the interaction of these shifts with employment, life stage and policy changes.