Demand for migrant workers: institutional system effects beyond national borders

The rapidly growing research literature on migrants and COVID-19 highlights the relatively high although variable share of migrants among workers employed in essential occupations in sectors such as health, care, food production, and transport in many high-income countries (e.g. Poeschel and Nivorozhkin 2022; Fasani and Mazza 2020; Fernández-Reino, Sumption, and Vargas-Silva 2020; Gelatt 2020; OECD 2020a). It also raises important questions about the role of migrant labour – both so-called high- and lower-skilled workers – in shaping societal resilience to an external shock, the potential implications for labour immigration policies and migrants’ rights, and how these may vary across high-income countries with different institutional landscapes (Anderson, Poeschel, and Ruhs 2021; Tagliacozzo, Pisacane, and Kilkey 2020, 2021; FoxRuhs and Ruhs 2022).

The increased awareness of migrants as essential workers in rich countries has renewed interest in long-standing questions about the nature, variations, and determinants of the use and employment conditions of migrant workers in specific sectors and occupations (e.g. Waldinger and Lichter 2003). A key insight from this literature, that has been integrated in more recent work on migrants and societal resilience, is that the degree of reliance of a sector or occupation on migrant labour is influenced, at least in part, by the institutional and policy context, which comprises a series of intersecting systems (Anderson and Ruhs 2010). The systems shaping migrant labour demand, supply and conditions include not only labour immigration policies (including migrants’ legal rights) but also other national policies and institutions, for example, the regulation of labour markets, the provision of welfare, training and education, housing policies, and sector-specific policies such as different types of social care systems (e.g. Boräng and Cerna 2019; Boräng 2018; Afonso and Devitt 2016; Cerna 2016a; Wright 2012). Many of these broader institutions, which vary considerably across countries, are deeply embedded and ‘historically grown’ meaning that they typically – although not always – change slowly and incrementally (e.g. Hall and Thelen 2009; Streeck and Thelen 2005). This is one reason why there can be considerable cross-country variation and path dependence in the employment of migrant labour (e.g. Dias-Abey 2022).

A key policy implication of this research is that reducing reliance on migrant workers – a common demand of actors who argue against immigration – cannot be done through immigration policies alone but requires fundamental changes to certain societal institutions and policies (e.g. Anderson and Ruhs 2010; Kremer, Schrijvers, and Holtslag 2013; Afonso and Devitt 2017). Conversely, when institutional systems (such as national labour market regulations) do change – through exogenous shocks/crises (e.g. Bamber et al. 2021; Saurugger and Terpan 2018), endogenous processes within the system (e.g. Streeck and Thelen 2005) or a combination of both – there can be important implications for the employment of migrant workers (see Kaczmarczyk, 2023 in this Special Issue).

The aim of this paper is to expand research on how national institutional systems shape the employment of migrants, and thus also societal resilience, in high-income countries by thinking about systems outside the box of the nation state. As discussed in the introduction to this Special Issue (Tagliacozzo, Pisacane & Kilkey, 2023), we are interested in ‘system thinking’ and in the ‘wider environment’ that both shapes and is shaped by migration systems, and we engage with the transnational and international facets of this environment. The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed how a significant share of the ‘essential’ goods such as medical equipment necessary for societal resilience in high-income countries is imported from lower-income countries, and that these global supply chains often involve the employment of migrant workers. In other words, highincome countries’ reliance on migrant workers is not restricted to migrants working in high-income countries but extends, through global supply chains, to migrants employed in lower-income countries. This brings to the fore the importance of considering how the employment of migrants in global supply chains, and by extension societal resilience of higher-income countries, is shaped by trade policies and agreements regulating flows of essential products across countries; labour markets and conditions in low- and middle income countries producing essential products for export; and migration systems between and within low- and middle-income countries. We understand these as institutional systems insofar as they comprise formal rules and regulations as well as informal rules (anchored in people’s values and norms) that structure and govern the behaviour and interaction of actors (compare Streeck and Thelen 2005). As argued in the Introduction to this Special Issue (Tagliacozzo, Pisacane & Kilkey, 2023), critically, these institutional systems are not standalone but interact and affect each other. Relatively little attention has been paid to the crucial role of migration systems in linking different institutional systems relating to labour and trade both within and across countries.