This session brings together two perspectives on how institutions and actors co-produce migration and work. The first paper to be presented compares the Netherlands and the UK to examine how automation and digital agriculture intersect with labour regulation, immigration policy, unions, employers, and migrant workers, showing why precarious migrant labour persists despite techno-optimist narratives.

The second paper develops legal agency as a framework for understanding how migrants interpret, mobilise, and contest EU labour migration law. It highlights how law not only structures resources and constraints but also shapes imaginaries and aspirations, calling for a reflective, decolonial legal methodology centered on migrant voices. Together, the papers trace how technology, law, and lived experience jointly configure opportunities, precarity, and pathways of action.

The Migration Working Group (MWG) is a researcher-led research group, whose aim is to foster exchange on the latest, cutting-edge migration research and give the opportunity to early career scholars and PhD researchers to present their research.