Labour

In 2013, Sheena Magenya came to Germany for an international conference at the invitation of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. She had no problems getting a visa at the German Embassy in Nairobi. She thinks that her positive experience is also related to the reason for her trip.

Besides job creations and responding to care needs, a central argument justifying the development of in-home care has been that of gender equality. In her paper, Emilia Roig argues that the stated policy objective of “freeing” the productive potential of the more highly-skilled women - as announced by the European Commission – widens the gender pay gap, instead of fostering gender equality in the workplace.

Nouria Ouali shows that racism and discrimination in the workplace in Europe have increased with the economic crisis and how trade unions (should) take action against it, including within their own organizations.

Elena Marda connects the "old" migration of the 1960s to the recent developments, where thousands of young and well-educated Greeks leave their home-country hoping to find a better future.

Agnieszka Fihel analyses the trajectories of Polish migration to Western Europe finding that host countries determine their share of migrants with their immigration policy regulations. Also, reversed migration due to the global financial crisis depends on the economic situation of the host country.

Gervais Appave defines labour migrants as a 'resource' that must be treated delicately. He ascribes the increase in human mobility to the deliberate decision by the EU choosing economic growth as the primary policy goal.

Ibrahim Awad, highlights that also medium and low skilled labour is in demand. Europe's multiple unintegrated labour markets complicate migration, with the Blue Card providing only little relief.

Western societies in Europe are growing old fast and life expectancy is rising. Professor Rainer Münz sheds light on possible policy solutions for a shrinking active workforce.

Jane Hardy examines the special relationship between Poland and the UK. She sees migration as a 'revolving door', a relationship of extensive traffic between East and West, highlighting that 'deskilling' and 'gatekeeping' negatively affect large numbers of Polish migrants.

Research on female labour migrants has been generally neglected in the discourse of global labour migration. Eleonore Kofman and Parvati Raghuram refute the assumption that female migrants are unemployed because they do not have skills, tracing misconceptions of gender discrimination in employment against migrant women.