The Role of Argumentation and Institutions for Labour Migration in the European Union – Exemplified by Spanish labour migration to Germany
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/imig.12338 |
| Published date | 01 December 2017 |
| Date | 01 December 2017 |
| Author | Oliver Wieczorek,Christiane Heimann |
The Role of Argumentation and Institutions for
Labour Migration in the European Union –
Exemplified by Spanish labour migration to
Germany
Christiane Heimann* and Oliver Wieczorek*
ABSTRACT
This contribution will show how institutions in Spain and Germany facilitated intra-European
labour mobility as a solution to a mismatch in the labour market. To this end, we have chosen
the recruitment of Spanish job candidates for German employers as an example. Employing
Bourdieu’sfield-theoretical framework as well as expert interviews, we highlight the role of
institutional agents encouraging labour migration. We analysed 30 expert interviews to gain
insights from institutional agents that facilitate labour migration in the Spanish and the German
labour market. Our findings show how these agents use their resources to legitimize policies
and create sustainable structures steering labour migration and integration.
1. A NEW WAVE OF LABOUR MOBILITY
In the wake of the economic crisis, we have witnessed the labour mobility of young Spaniards to
Germany, supported by different institutions in both Spain and Germany.
Although free labour movement for EU citizens was already established in the Maastricht Treaty of
1993 (Article 20 TFEU) only a comparatively small number of them took advantage of this opportu-
nity (Favell, 2006, 23). In the framework of the programme Europe 2020, the European Commission
encouraged people to draw on free labour movement with its initiative Youth on the Move (European
Commission, 2010), which aims to improve education and employability so as to raise the youth
employment rate. The programme Europe 2020 intends to strengthen European economies by increas-
ing their employment, productivity and social cohesion (European Commission, 2015b).
The economic crisis in Southern Europe gave rise to labour mobility from the Southern to the
Northern member states (Conti, 2011; Gonz
alez and Romera, 2014; Gonzalez-Ferrer, 2014; Gropas
and Trifilyandou, 2014). Spain was hit particularly hard by the financial crisis as its economic boom
in the 2000s was built on cheap credits and internal consumption. When these two factors of
employment creation lost momentum, this involved an extensive reduction of jobs (Ferreiro and Ser-
rano, 2012). We should point out in this context that 86 per cent of the destroyed jobs were occu-
pied by young people between the age of 16 and 29 (CCOO, 2011). Consequently, with general
unemployment rates having risen and stabilized between 20 per cent and 26 per cent, youth unem-
ployment rates jumped to around 50-56 per cent during the years 2012-2016. (Instituto Nacional de
Estadistica, 2017). As in other EU countries, a substantial educational expansion took place in Spain
* Otto-Friedrich-Universit€
at Bamberg
doi: 10.1111/imig.12338
©2017 The Authors
International Migration ©2017 IOM
International Migration Vol. 55 (S1) 2017
ISSN 0020-7985Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
in the second half of the 20
th
century (Beduwe/Planas, 2003). With the domestic labour market not
growing proportionally, many qualified young people emigrated in search of labour opportunities,
which is proven by a loss of 10% of the Spanish population (Br€
auninger, 2014).
Germany is one of the main destinations as the impact of the economic crisis was relatively
low (ibid). Germany’s export-minded industry recovered quickly from the Euro crisis, leading to
a steady decrease of the unemployment rate from 10 per cent to 6 per cent between 2007 and
August 2016 (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2017), and labour shortages arose, especially in qualified
professions (Br€
ucker et al., 2014). In the aftermath of the financial crisis, Germany has become
the number one immigration country in the eurozone thanks to its booming economy and the
development of new active recruitment measures over the past few years, while Spain has
become the number one emigration country (Br€
auninger, 2014).
As the two EU member states are in a complementary situation, they developed a memorandum
concerning the recruitment of Spanish job candidates for the German labour market (Ministerio de
Empleo y Seguridad Social, 2013). In this way, Spain was able to reduce its unemployment rate
and Germany could compensate for labour shortages. Hence, both countries benefitted from free
labour movement by implementing policies that facilitate transnational recruitment and job search,
in particular, the programme MobiPro-EU.
The experiences made in the Spanish-German case might be of particular interest to other EU mem-
ber states since a similar initiative called “your first Eures job”(European Commission, 2015a) sup-
porting intra-EU mobility has been promoted EU-wide since 2014. Policymakers, recruiters, migrants
or any institution involved in labour migration are likely to profit from the Spanish-German experi-
ences. Therefore, we aim to raise the awareness of possible challenges of intra-EU mobility and
strategies to cope with them. Accordingly, we address the following research question: How do insti-
tutional agents legitimize and facilitate transnational labour migration between Spain and Germany?
In order to analyse the institutional role of labour migration from Spain to Germany, we chose
Bourdieu0sfield theory (Bourdieu 1997). Its framework provides us with concepts of different kinds
of capital that are employed to form a basis for emerging transnational structures. The main data-
base comprises of 30 qualitative interviews with experts, who are either directors or specialists at
the labour market institutions involved in recruitment from Spain.
The article is structured as follows. The second section describes the current state of research in
migration studies relevant to our case. In the third section, we introduce the core concepts of Bour-
dieu’sfield theory applied in this contribution. We refer to the application of the qualitative methods
and the database of expert interviews in the fourth section. Section five depicts the legitimizing pro-
cess, the promotion of targeted recruitment of professionals and the efforts of labour integration in
Spain and Germany. In our concluding section, we discuss the transferability of the Spanish-German
strategies of transnational labour recruitment and labour integration to other EU member states.
In summary, for EU economies seeking to benefit from the common EU labour market, we advo-
cate paying special attention to the legitimizing process, recruitment and labour integration.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
The recruitment of Spanish professionals to ease labour shortages in the German labour market might
remind us of the guest worker agreement between these two countries, concluded half a century ago. In
fact, the good experiences made with Spanish guest workers in terms of integration increased the will-
ingness on the German side to recruit workers from Spain (Thr€
anhardt, 2014). However, these two
waves of recruitment differ profoundly. In Germany’s booming economy in the post-war period, labour
migration from Spainwas especially attractive because qualification requirements were low and earnings
relatively high, especially when compared to salaries in Spain (Herbert, 2001). Additionally, the guest
70 Heimann and Wieczorek
©2017 The Authors. International Migration ©2017 IOM
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