The EU's working population is both aging and shrinking and the labour market is experiencing shortages in numerous sectors. This stark reality has however not led to an enhanced appreciation of the work done by short-term workers from third countries, and the European Commission itself has stated that they are (still) not sufficiently protected from exploitation.
This is illustrated by a few examples from a recent ETUI study covering 23 EU and EEA countries that comprehensively mapped how rules on immigration and social security for short-term migrant workers interact with their labour market status.
For example, immigrant domestic (household) workers in Cyprus are tied to a controversial contract and receive wages at about a third of the national minimum; short-term seasonal workers in Germany are not covered by social security; and workers in Finland on work contracts less than three months long (often with migration backgrounds) are not covered by collective agreements.
In fact, it seems that the ways in which social security, immigration and employment law interact with each other can put migrant workers in vulnerable situations, exposed to exploitation. This effect is especially apparent during certain points in such workers' trajectory, namely arrival, stay and return to their country of origin.
Entry is the first juncture at which migration and employment status can potentially be very closely interlinked.
For a migrant worker to even be allowed to...
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