Beyond ‘bad actors’: Why do some employers use irregular migrant workers?

Irregular migrants, defined as migrants without the legal right to reside in their host countries, play a significant role in European labour markets. Of the estimated 3-4 million irregular migrants in Europe, the majority are thought to work in lower-waged and often highly precarious jobs in sectors such as agriculture, social care, construction, and hospitality. Some of this is ‘essential’ work integral to economic and social resilience to external shocks as became evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. Despite the embeddedness of irregular migrants across European labour markets, the drivers of employers’ reliance on irregular migrant labour remain poorly understood. This knowledge gap does not only matter for research; irregular migration has high political and social salience in many European countries. To respond to public concerns and to reduce vulnerabilities and exploitation in the employment of irregular migrants, it is necessary to understand better why some employers use irregular migrant workers specifically, and how and why this might vary within and across countries.

Our new analysis, conducted within the PRIME project, begins to address some of these questions. Drawing on interviews with over 130 employers across five European countries – Austria, Italy, Poland, Sweden, and the UK – we explored what motivates employers to use migrant workers with different types of legal status (including those without the legal right to reside and work) and how this varies across European states and sectors.  A key question we examined is whether and how employers’ use of (irregular) migrant workers is influenced by national institutions, especially labour market and welfare institutions.

Our findings indicate that national labour market and welfare institutions, alongside associated social norms and practices, can exert significant influence on employers’ use of irregular migrant workers. These institutional effects can operate both independently of and in interaction with immigration policies. Notably, where labour and welfare systems foster strong demand for migrant labour, but immigration policies provide no or only highly restricted legal employment options, the likelihood of irregular employment increases. By demonstrating how institutional contexts structure employers’ options and incentives, our results refine prevailing ‘actor-based’ explanations that attribute irregularity primarily to the interests and behaviours of employers, migrants, and labour market intermediaries.

Labour market regulations

Employers’ use of different types of migrant workers is often heavily influenced by recruitment and employment agencies, especially in lower-waged labour markets. Where such labour market intermediaries are widespread and under-regulated, some employers use them to outsource responsibilities for checking workers’ legal status and right to work. Some of the employers interviewed for our research know that irregular migrants are ‘hidden’ in labour teams, or that subcontractors are working in breach of various laws (tax, labour, and potentially immigration), but they nevertheless plausibly claim ignorance and thereby avoid penalties.

Entrenched informal work practices demonstrate how a core institutional feature of particular national labour markets can influence employers’ recruitment and employment practices, and this includes their use of irregular migrant workers. For example, some of the employers we interviewed said that illegal practices such as paying cash to avoid taxes are common and asked why employing irregular migrants is regarded as particularly egregious. They also connected employing irregular migrants to historical informal practices, especially in sectors like agriculture and home care.

Welfare institutions  

A country’s welfare, training and retirement policies help shape the size and characteristics of the available labour supply. Employers were particularly sensitive to the consequences of the welfare system on the perceived motivations, suitability, and availability of different types of workers.

For example, some of the employers interviewed for our research focused on the perceived ‘disbenefit’ of citizens’ “too easy” access to social assistance. At the same time, migrant workers’ lack of access to social assistance and unemployment benefits was seen as a motivating force, ensuring that they remain a reliable source of low-cost labour. This motivated some employers to use migrant workers including, at times, those without legal status.

The organisation and regulatory environment of care can also influence employer demand for migrant labour with different types of legal status. This was connected to welfare but also encompassed caring responsibilities and social ties. One agricultural employer in the UK put it like this: “Because it’s just English mentality – I really do think it’s that. They want a good work-life balance. A lot of the people who work with us… they’re not shy of hard work – maybe their families are not living here – they’re living back home – so they can do these long hours – they can send money back home.”

It is not only that the familial responsibilities of migrants are commodified because of distance, but that in nearly all of the countries (with the exception of Poland) where we conducted our research, migrants play an important role in the outsourced provision of care work for citizens. How this work varies and the different ways of organising and regulating the provision of older adult care including care homes versus home care and publicly funded versus privately funded, have implications for the use of migrant workers. For example, if the provision of a particular service is publicly funded, underinvestment in a publicly funded sector can put pressure on labour costs and create a structural demand for low-cost (including irregular) migrant labour as has been the case, for example, in the social care sector in the UK.

Tensions between immigration, labour, and welfare policies

The effects that national labour and welfare institutions have on employers’ use of irregular and other migrant workers can operate both independently and in interaction with prevailing immigration policies.  Irregularity in the employment of migrant is more likely where national labour and welfare systems generate strong demand for migrant labour but the prevailing immigration policies do not provide adequate opportunities for employing migrants legally. This tension can be exacerbated by different temporalities of change: in many European countries, national immigration policies have become highly politicised, volatile, and less stable than the broader national labour and welfare institutions.

What does it mean for policymaking?

When considering how to respond to the employment of irregular migrant workers, it is critical for governments to think beyond immigration and related enforcement policies and also consider how the institutional context, especially labour market and welfare institutions, shape the incentives of employers and other key actors (including migrants and citizen workers). If the broader institutional context encourages the use of irregular workers, more restrictive enforcement of immigration policies will, on their own, not be effective in reducing the employment of irregular migrants.

At the same time, our analysis suggests that the characteristics of immigration policies and related enforcement measures do matter for both the scale and types of irregularity that are likely to emerge in the employment of migrants. Depending on the context, both ‘too much’ and ‘too little’ regulation can create irregularity. Effective policymaking requires a context-sensitive approach that takes account of how immigration rules interact with existing labour market structures, welfare institutions, and the norms and practices associated with them.

PRIME is a Horizon EU-funded project that analyses the conditions and politics of irregular migrants in Europe.