ILPC 2027

The paper begins by overviewing recent work which has problematised employers’ needs for imported labour.  Who needs migrant workers – and whether they get them – is a deeply political process (Ruhs and Anderson, 2010).  Labour immigration involves a series of socio-political choices: at its simplest, buy not make.  These choices may be ‘non-decisions’ in that some possible alternatives never become explicit.  This occurs because the employment strategies of firms are embedded in broader national institutional systems best understood as a historically specific variety of capitalism.  In the current historical period (unlike in the fordist period), liberal market economies tend to be more reliant on importing labour (see also Davitt, 2010).

The paper develops these arguments first by using existing research to reveal the implicit choices involved in three instances of labour immigration: the Gastarbeiter immigration during Europe’s fordist boom in the third quarter of the last century;  the recruitment of immigrants for care work in Europe today; the current global competition for the ‘best and brightest’.  In the first case those countries which had the most organised recruitment of so-called temporary workers (Germany, Switzerland) were those where least was done to mobilise women into the labour force.   In the second case creating good quality care work jobs does seem to be an alternative to importing workers, although the contrasts are less clear.  In the third case different education and re-training policies would obviate the need to import skilled labour, but this only rarely reaches the political agenda.  Nonetheless, within the EU the UK and Germany appear to offer two clearly contrasting situations, with skilled foreign labour utilised much more easily and effectively in the UK. 

During its boom period Ireland was often interpreted as a successful liberal market economy; it was also remarkable for its high level of immigration.  The paper then explores whether Ireland’s reliance on immigration can be explained by its liberal market economy (LME) type institutions.  This part of the paper uses research data from three recent research projects: interviews with employers, decision-makers and immigrants and analysis of micro-data from the Quarterly National Household Survey (the Irish labour force survey).

The boom clearly increased labour force participation amongst all groups (women, older workers, etc).  However, conventional accounts ignore that Ireland never became a high employment state in EU terms.  An implicit policy choice was to import labour rather than change labour market and social policies (especially childcare) to mobilise groups previously marginal to the labour market.  In construction and hospitality employers developed a categorical preference for migrant workers over  indigenous workers.  Whereas the origins of the software industry were in Irish educational expansion in the 1980s, by the 2000s the industry had become reliant on importing skilled and also less skilled workers.  With no effective education or training  policy and firms locked into short-term employment strategies, both employers and the state preferred to buy rather than make skill.

References

Davitt, Camilla (2010).  The migrant worker factor in labour market reform.'  European Journal of Industrial Relations 16: 259-275.

Ruhs, Martin and Bridget Anderson (eds.) (2010).  Who needs migrant workers?  Oxford UP