New member state workers in Western European labour markets. Are they civically stratified?

ABSTRACT

This study applies the theory of civic stratification to analyse how the integration of EU-10 and EU-3 immigrants into the labour markets of six European countries – France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom – has evolved between 2005 and 2016. Special attention is paid to the effect of the moratoria on the free movement of workers, which lasted between 0 and 7 years. Data from the EU-LFS is used in two mixed effects logistic regression models for each country, using the following dependent variables: having employment and if that employment matches the qualifications of the worker. The interaction between nationality (own-country, EU-10, EU-3 and EU-15) and whether or not a moratoria exists is used to compare the level of labour integration of the EU-10 and EU-3 groups with that of national populations and EU-15 immigrants. Our results show that during the moratoria EU-10 and EU-3 immigrants have had a much lower labour market performance than people with full European citizenship. This gap has decreased drastically, without disappearing in many cases, after the moratoria ended.

KEYWORDS:

• Civic stratification
• EU enlargements
• transitional arrangements
• new member state workers
• labour market integration
• over-qualification

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For reasons related to confidentiality, the EU-LFS only provides one category for individuals from a country that entered the EU in 2007 or 2013. Although Croatian immigrants are included in the EU-3 group, this study leaves them out due to their small volume. Croatia's average emigration between 2004 and 2016 is just 14,199 (Croatian Bureau of Statistics 2019).

2 The results presented ignore the use of the safeguard clause by Spain because it did not affect Romanian citizens already employed or registered as jobseekers in Spain (for further discussion, see Kraleva 2013). The results of the models that consider this reintroduction are very similar and they reach the same conclusions.

3 The International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) was used to estimate the years of education completed by each person (OECD 1999, UIS 2012). It was not possible to introduce a more disaggregated measure for education because the EU-LFS contains ISCED 1997 until 2014 and ISCED 2011 thereafter, making it necessary to harmonize them. In addition, the sample size is small for some countries and years.

4 The logit scale is convenient for the graphs because it is linearized. The tables present the odds ratio because its interpretation is more intuitive.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities [Grant Numbers: FPU17/05061, RTI2018-098455-A-C22] and the Consejería de Educación, Junta de Castilla y León [Grant Number: 5408].

Notes on contributors

Jesús García-Gómez

Jesús García-Gómez is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Communication at University of Salamanca (Spain). His PhD research focuses on patterns of economic and demographic integration of immigrants in the EU.

Mikolaj Stanek

Mikolaj Stanek is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication at University of Salamanca (Spain). His research interests are economic sociology, migrations and social demography.

Alberto del Rey

Alberto del Rey is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Communication at University of Salamanca (Spain). His research interests are economic social demography, migrations and labour market.