Introduction: Labour migration in Europe: Changing policies – changing organizations – changing people
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12408 |
| Author | Barbara Laubenthal |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
Introduction: Labour migration in Europe:
Changing policies –changing organizations –
changing people
Barbara Laubenthal*
ABSTRACT
Under which circumstances do labour migration policies change? When do organizations
become agents of change? And what triggers significant transformation in labour migration
flows? We start from the assumption that, during the last years, change in the field of labour
migration has intensified. In some countries, paradigmatic changes towards more liberal immi-
gration regimes have taken place; new organizations have emerged; and the profile of intra-
European workers’mobility has changed. The articles assembled in this volume shed light on
developments in the field of labour migration by using the notion of change as their concep-
tual lens. They show that changes can best be captured with a multi-level model and an inter-
disciplinary approach that connects labour migration issues to broader political science and
sociological theories. Such an analysis shows that recent changes are paradigmatic, multi-
layered and ambiguous with regard to a further liberalization of the European labour migration
regime.
INTRODUCTION
Regarding immigration, the spotlight in Europe is currently on the large influx of refugees from
war-torn Syria and other parts of the world and on the attempts of the European Union to deal with
this crisis. While this is certainly one of the biggest challenges that Europe is facing, during the last
few years other important changes concerning immigration to Europe have been taking place. This
special issue focuses on recent transformations in the field of European labour migration. It is based
on the workshop “Labour migration in Europe. Changing policies –changing organizations –
changing people”, funded by Volkswagen Foundation, that took place at the University of Kon-
stanz, Germany in May 2015. The workshop had invited contributions which would assess and
analyse current changes in the European labour migration regime. Its aim was to break down the
general question about preconditions and forms of workers’mobility in the European Union by
looking at new developments on the levels of policies, organizations and migrants, and by linking
these three dimensions to broader theoretical approaches and debates on policy change, organiza-
tions as political actors, and changes in migration and integration regimes.
The new developments in the field of labour migration that this volume sets out to analyse are
embedded in a broader transformation process that started in the 2000s. From the 1980s to the turn
of the century, following the formal recruitment stops enacted by most traditional immigration
states in the first half of the 1970s, international labour flows were significantly reduced and a
* University of Texas, Austin
doi: 10.1111/imig.12408
©2017 The Author
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (S1) 2017
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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