What Explains the Union Membership Gap between Migrants and Natives?

DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/bjir.12192
Date01 December 2016
Published date01 December 2016
British Journal of Industrial Relations doi: 10.1111/bjir.12192
54:4 December 2016 0007–1080 pp. 846–869
What Explains the Union Membership
Gap between Migrants and Natives?
Maria Kranendonk and Paul de Beer
Abstract
This article explores the dierences in unionization rates between migrant and
native-born workers in 23 European countries. It explores whether individual
characteristics or contextual factors explain the variation across countries in
the degree of trade unions’ inclusion of migrantworkers. The analyses show that
individual characteristics cannot explain the variation in the dierence between
migrant and native unionization rates.Characteristics of the industrial relations
regime in the country of destination, in particularthe institutional embeddedness
of trade unions,aect the likelihood that migrants join trade unions as compared
to native workers.
1. Introduction
The relationship between trade unions and immigrants has always been
fraught with tensions and contradictions. On the one hand, unions often
tend to see migrant workers as a threat to the established position of
incumbent workers, since many migrants, usually coming from poorer
countries, are prepared to work under less favourable employment conditions
than the indigenous labour force. As a consequence, immigrants may exert
a downward pressure on employment conditions, including wages, and may
replace incumbent workers. On the other hand, unions usually strive for
the improvement of the employment conditions of all workers, especially
those who are relatively vulnerable for exploitation by employers, including
migrants.Moreover, improvingthe wages and working conditions of migrants
may mitigate the competition between migrants and native-born workers (or
native workers, for short) and, consequently, reduce the risk that the latter
are being replaced by migrants. Nevertheless, even if unions acknowledge
that native workers and migrant workers have common interests, it is still
Maria Kranendonk is at the University of Amsterdam. Paul de Beer is at Amsterdam Institute
for Advanced LabourStudies (AIAS), University of Amsterdam.
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2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd,
9600 Garsington Road,Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
Union Membership Gap between Migrants and Natives 847
more dicult to organize the latter group. This is due, among others, to
dierences in language and culture, but also to the fact that migrants may
not intend to stay in the host country for a long time. In general, trade
union membership rates tend to be lower among migrants than among native
workers in many prosperous Western countries. Several studies suggest that
this is not only explained by the individual characteristics of migrants, such
as the overrepresentation of migrants in particular industries or occupations
that are less organized, but also bycontextual factors that aect how inclusive
trade unions are towards migrant workers (e.g. Cach´
on and Valles 2003;
Eldring et al. 2012; Gorodzeisky and Richards 2013; Krings 2009; Lucio and
Perrett 2009; Marino 2012; Penninx and Roosblad 2000; Wrench 2004). This
study connects to this strand of literature by exploring to what extent the
dierence between the unionization ratesof migrants and natives in European
countries are explained by contextual factors related to the industrial
relations regime of a country, in addition to the individual characteristics of
migrants.
While most previous studies use qualitative methods to analyse the role of
contextual factors (e.g. Cach´
on and Valles 2003; Eldring et al. 2012; Krings
2009; Lucio and Perrett 2009; Marino 2012; Penninx and Roosblad 2000;
Wrench 2004), this studyapplies a quantitative research design. With a multi-
level logistic regression analysis we examine to what extent the dierences in
unionization rates between migrantsand natives in 23 European countries are
explained by the individual characteristics of the migrants on the one hand
and by country characteristics, related to the role of the trade unions and the
industrial relations regime, on the other. We use data from the six rounds of
the European Social Survey in the period 2002–2012.
Our research question is:
To what extent can the dierences between the unionization rates of
migrants and of natives in European countries be explained by com-
positional eects, i.e. a dierence in individual characteristics between
migrants and natives, and by contextual eects, related to the industrial
relations regime of the country of destination?
The structure of this article is as follows. We start with a concise overview
of theories of union membership and discuss whether they can explain a
dierence in unionization rate betweenmigrants and natives. Next, we discuss
the data we use, the operationalization of the variables and the estimation
method. After that we present the results of the empirical analyses. We
conclude with a brief discussion of the results and our conclusions.
2. Theoretical framework
Determinants of Trade Union Membership
In order to understand why unionization rates dier between migrant and
native workers, we start with a brief overview of theoretical approaches to
C
2016 John Wiley& Sons Ltd/London School of Economics.

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