Oiling the wheels? Flexible labour markets and the migration industry

ABSTRACT

The growing commercialisation of migration, often through a multiplicity of labour market intermediaries, is an issue of increasing academic interest. We seek to contribute to an emerging research agenda on the migration industries by exploring how one of the key actors that constitutes it, recruitment agencies, sits at the nexus between flexible labour market structures and migrant labour. Interviews with U.K. labour providers and low-wage employers form the evidence base for an analysis of the strategies developed by recruiters to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the flexible international labour market. We seek to contribute to understandings of the analytical categories within migration systems by illustrating how the migration industry interacts with other key stakeholders to structure international migration.

KEYWORDS:

• Migration industries
• migration systems
• flexible labour markets
• labour providers
• East-Central European migration

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was conducted by researchers in the Centre for Population Centre, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) [grant number RES-625-28-0001].