Policy Developments in Labour Migration: Four Categories of Migrants The policy framework for legal migration, the Policy Plan on Legal Migration (COM(2005) 669 final), seeks to establish admission requirements in the case of only four selected categories of economic migrants: highly qualified workers, seasonal workers, remunerated trainees, and intra-corporate transferees. To do this, four specific legislative proposals are to be developed in the period 2006–2009. The general objective of the Policy Plan is to progress towards the coordination and harmonisation of migration policies at the EU level. The Plan states:
In consideration of the low employment and high unemployment rates in many EU countries, priority must be given to actions toward attracting more EU citizens and legally resident migrants to employment, with the aim of fulfilling the objectives of the New Lisbon Strategy for Growth and Jobs, in particular the employment guidelines.
(COM(2005) 669 final: 5)
In general terms, the Plan specifies that the proposed migration policy, to be complete, has to include measures towards the integration of migrants, apart from admission mechanisms. It says that ‘immigration represents a complex phenomenon that needs to be addressed coherently across all its dimensions.
Admission of economic immigrants is as inseparable from measures on integration on the one hand, as it is from the fight against illegal immigration
and employment, including trafficking, on the other’ (COM(2005) 669 final:
4).
When it comes to the gender dimension, the Policy Plan points out that ‘due attention will be paid to gender issues, with a view to protecting the most vulnerable groups’ (COM(2005) 669 final: 4). The association between
‘gender’, ‘women’ and ‘vulnerable persons’ is presented repeatedly in policy documents.
The Policy Plan aims to regulate the entry and stay of four categories of migrants. Highly qualified workers are needed in most MSs, and it is argued that the majority of highly qualified immigrants choose Canada and the US instead of the EU as their destination. Hence, ‘In response to this situation a common special procedure to quickly select and admit such immigrants, as well as attractive conditions to encourage them to choose Europe could be devised’ (COM(2005) 669 final: 7).
The category of seasonal workers incorporates those working in sectors such as agriculture, tourism, building, and other activities that are commonly supplied by migrants working illegally in unsafe conditions. The proposed mechanism includes residence/work permits for a limited number of months per year in a time span of 4–5 years (COM(2005) 669 final: 7).194
The other two categories are Intra-Corporate Transferees (ICT) and remunerated trainees. Members of both categories are supposed to be allowed to stay for a limited period of time (COM(2005) 669 final: 8).
It is interesting to note that sectors such as domestic/care work, in which migrant women are dominant as a majority of those so employed, are not discussed as part of the proposed Directives to regulate entry and residence of migrant workers from the specified categories. Domestic work remains largely unregulated (Franck & Spehar 2010: 53).
Framed within this Policy Plan is a proposed general framework directive195 whose main purpose is ‘to guarantee a common framework of rights to all third-country nationals in legal employment already admitted in a Member State, but not yet entitled to the long-term residence status’ (COM(2007) 638 final). Included in the programming of the Policy Plan on Legal Migration
194 See the example of Moroccan women picking strawberries in Spain (Franck & Spehar 2010: 38).
195 Proposal for a Council Directive, On a Single Application Procedure for a Single Permit for Third-Country Nationals to Reside and Work in the Territory of a Member State and on a Common Set of Rights for Third-Country Workers Legally Residing in a Member State (COM(2007) 638 final). This proposal for a directive is defined as a general framework because it would affect the four categories of economic migrants (i.e. highly qualified workers, seasonal workers, remunerated trainees, and intra-corporate transferees). This proposal is not yet a Directive.
there is as well the Proposal for a Council Directive titled On the Conditions of Entry and Residence of Third-Country Nationals for the Purposes of Highly Qualified Employment (COM(2007) 637 final), which became a Directive on 25 May 2009 (Council of the European Union 2009).196
Migration and Gender? Men’s Labour Migration
As said above, the discrepancies between what the Roadmap states as imperative in terms of the general objectives regarding the integration of a gender perspective in migration policies and what some policy proposals formulate (such as COM(2007) 637 final and COM(2007) 638 final) are striking. The same occurs with other policy documents at the EU general level that have been examined in chapter 4, such as the Reports on Equality between Women and Men. These documents repeatedly highlight the importance of the integration of a gender perspective in both migration and integration policies. For instance, the 2005 Report points out that ‘it is essential to take account of gender issues in immigration and integration policies. Immigrant women are often victims of dual racial and sexual discrimination and the EU does not fully utilize the employment potential of qualified women among immigrants’ (European Commission 2005a: 3).
On the other hand, most specific policy proposals within labour migration lack a gender perspective or even fail to introduce women into their focus.
The case of the Proposal for a Council Directive titled On the Conditions of Entry and Residence of Third-Country Nationals for the Purposes of Highly Qualified Employment (COM(2007) 637 final) is symptomatic of this lack of a gender perspective. The Proposal became a Directive on 25 May 2009 (Council of the European Union 2009). The purpose of the Directive, as stated in its Article 1(a), is to determine ‘the conditions of entry and residence for more than three months in the territory of the Member States of third-country nationals for the purpose of highly qualified employment as EU Blue Card holders, and of their family members’.
The Blue Card Directive, as it is often called, not only lacks any gender-sensitive dimension, but it presents a Blue Card holder who is explicitly male. To quote just a few examples:
Wherever the EU Blue Card holder does not have sufficient resources to maintain himself and, where applicable, the members of his family… (Council of the European Union 2009: Article 9.3.b)
196 The ‘Blue Card Directive’.
Member States shall determine whether applications for an EU Blue Card are to be made by the third-country national and/or by his employer. (ibid.: Article 10.1)
The applicant and/or his employer may be held responsible for the costs related to the return and readmission of the EU Blue Card holder and his family members, including costs incurred by public funds. (ibid.: Article 18.6)
The document refers to the permit recipient as a man. This is clear not only because of the sexist language that the document uses but also because the situation of women in the labour market, and specifically in relation to highly qualified employment, remains completely unproblematised.
Given that it is a widely recognised fact that many migrant women are compelled to take jobs that are under their level of qualification (European Commission 2006c: 16; European Women’s Lobby 2006: 21), it is intriguing that there is no reference to such an issue. The lack, for instance, of some sort of proposed mechanism to promote the inclusion of women in the highly qualified labour market can be regarded as indicative of the failure to include a gender perspective in the Directive. The specific problem of women finding obstacles to the recognition of their qualifications is completely missed.
The EWL has been active in demanding that the EU develop ‘strategies to facilitate the participation of migrant women in the labour market in terms of recognition of diplomas and other qualifications and the provision of positive measures in order to promote the practice of hiring immigrant women’
(European Women’s Lobby 2006: 21, 2007a: 12).197 Franck and Spehar also refer to this question of ‘deskilling’:
While the majority of migrant women find jobs in low-skilled professions, they are far from being ‘unskilled’. The downgrading and lack of recognition of formal skills and qualifications obtained in the country of origin are a common problem faced by women.
Most migrant women tend to be working in activities that do not reflect their training and skill levels; this ‘deskilling’ or ‘brain waste’ is cause for serious concern, not only for the individual migrant but also for the society in which they work. The fact that migrant women meet the increasing demand for cheap and flexible labour is not incidental or accidental but a result of the gender construction of labour markets. (2010: 6)
197 As I explained in chapter 3 and its appendix, when it comes to EWL material, I have analysed EWL reports in order to explore discourses at the EU general level, i.e. the first body of texts. But I also analysed EWL material as part of the discourse analysis of the migration policy area, i.e. the second body of texts. There is quite a lot of material produced by the EWL particularly on migrant women, asylum, and trafficking. In this regard, it is important to say that EWL’s position is quite critical. Therefore, I will be using EWL material to describe the problem of migration, asylum, and trafficking, but also to critically assess it.
The EWL has noted in several of its reports this situation in which highly qualified women migrating to the EU have to take any kind of work regardless of their qualification. This is the case, for instance, of the Bulgarian woman who has been living in Greece for fifteen years and works as a cleaner in one of the largest Greek cleaning companies; she holds a university degree (Kambouri & Zavos 2010; see also Ludvig 2006). Besides being an experience of de-skilling, according to the Lobby, the situation also
‘results in the host society considering them as unskilled, although many may be better qualified than their job suggests’ (European Women’s Lobby 2007a: 27).
As said above, DG Employment recognises that migrant women are worse off than their male counterparts and that even though migrant women and men have similar unemployment rates, there is a striking exception for the highly skilled segment of the labour force, where women tend to be unemployed more than men. Further, the EWL has pointed out:
In 2002, the employment rate of non-EU nationals was consistently lower than that of EU nationals for all ages and qualifications, and significantly more so for women than men. The gap increased with qualifications to reach 22.4 percentage points between highly qualified women who are EU nationals and highly qualified immigrant women.
These statistics seem to show that variations in employment among immigrant women are determined less by their qualifications than by the features of the majority society, such as attitudes towards the participation of women in the labour market, discrimination in the access to jobs and national employment patterns. (European Women’s Lobby 2006: 22, emphasis in the original)
The Blue Card Directive is a clear example of the blindness to which Kofman and Sales refer (2000: 195, 203). Moreover, though the EU approach to equal opportunities comprises a dual-track approach that combines gender mainstreaming and specific actions to promote gender equality, not even specific actions are foreseen in the Blue Card Directive.
One of the interviewees, a gender coordinator in migration and asylum, whose function is precisely to mainstream gender in all the policy proposals she works on, compares funding with mainstreaming and says that the possibility of taking gender into account is greater in the case of specific actions such as funding. The interviewee thinks that to include gender in legislative proposals such as the Proposal for the Blue Card (COM(2007) 637 final) is much more difficult:
Most of the funds in this area migration/asylum are very new, so they either have started a couple of years ago or just started. There is one fund under European Fund for the
Integration of Third-Country Nationals. It is mainly targeted for newly arrived, third-country nationals. Well, this is a fund which has 825 million Euros for five years: 2007-2013, and that has national programmes and Community Actions, most of the bulk of it are national programmes. So, many are divided between member states and then they have the national programmes and they give out the money. And this European Fund for Integration of Third-Country Nationals gives you all the objectives for which you can ask the money for and normally is 50 per cent co-funding (50 per cent is paid by the [Member] State and 50 per cent is paid by the EU, comes from the EU budget). But there are some specific objectives which are seen as more important than others within the EU in that program which then, if the Member State sends the money for that purpose, it could get more co-funding, it could get a co-funding up to 75 per cent. And one of these things is... the specific needs... to incorporate a gender perspective into the national programmes, so if you make... wait, I can even quote to you: ‘The funding of these national programmes can be increased up to 75 per cent for action which address specific target groups such as women, youth and children.’ So, if you have a programme which would primarily focus on immigrant women, then you get 75 per cent of the money.
That’s another example of gender mainstreaming, how we try to... where we can and say... here we can take it into account [gender]. [...] for immigrant women, you get more EU money. As simple as this. So, this would be an example for funding. [... ] Whereas we can’t... we couldn’t find anything in the two labour migration proposals198 of specific women’s interest.199
The interviewee refers to the European Fund for the Integration of Third-Country Nationals, which is a funding programme for the period 2007-2013.200 It is clear that the example she is describing is not an example of gender mainstreaming but an example of specific action. On the other hand, the interviewee refers to the proposed general framework directive (COM(2007) 638 final) and the Proposal for the Blue Card (COM(2007) 637 final) as not having any gender impact or gender dimension likely to be taken into account.
How is gender understood? Is it understood at all? As said, the contradictions between general texts and specific proposals and policies have to do with how the problem is represented, how different key words, categories, and concepts are defined and understood. This quote is very significant in this regard, as this interviewee is actually in charge of mainstreaming gender in policy proposals on legal migration. It seems that it is difficult for those in
198 The interviewee refers to COM(2007) 637 final and COM(2007) 638 final.
199 Interview with gender coordinator for migration and asylum at DG JFS, May 2008, emphasis added.
200 See http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:52005PC0123(03):EN:HTML, accessed in March 2012.
charge of mainstreaming gender into labour migration and asylum proposals to find the gender dimension in the policy questions they deal with. The fact that those who should mainstream gender do not seem to have a clear understanding of what that means obviously influences the way in which the strategy is actually put into action.
To guarantee the mainstreaming of gender into migration policies, the EWL has been active in demanding the inclusion of migrant women’s voices and experiences within the policy-making process (European Women’s Lobby 2006: 28, 2008: 10).201 The participation of migrant women’s organisations, however, is still lacking in the process of formulating policy proposals in the area. The contact with women’s organisations is ad hoc and limited to the EWL.202
Another important proposal within the Policy Plan on Legal Migration, the proposed general framework directive (COM(2007) 638 final),203 does not systematically refer to ‘he’; at least the target is defined as ‘he/she’. The proposal seeks to provide ‘a common set of rights to all third-country workers lawfully residing in a Member State and not yet entitled to long-term residence status’ (COM(2007) 638 final: 2). The target of the proposal is thus an already legally residing immigrant worker. The purpose of the Directive would be to determine ‘a single application procedure for issuing a single permit for third-country nationals to reside and work in the territory of a Member State, in order to simplify their admission and to facilitate the control of their status’ (ibid.: 16) as well as to establish ‘a common set of rights to third country workers legally residing in a Member State’ (ibid.).
The proposal also specifies that when MSs implement the proposed directive, the principle of no discrimination ‘on the basis of sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin, genetic characteristics, language, religion or beliefs, political or other opinions, membership of a national minority, fortune, birth, disabilities, age or sexual orientation’ should prevail, in conformity with the Racial Equality Directive (2000/43/EC) and the Employment Equality Directive (2000/78/EC) (COM(2007) 638 final: 16).
As said, many of the policy proposals within migration area contain very little about gender even if they are framed within the strategy of gender mainstreaming. The gender-blind logic defining policy formulation
201 In fact, ‘The official launch of the European Network of Migrant Women (ENoMW), took place in Brussels in cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee on 18 June 2010.’ Available at http://womenlobby.org/spip.php?rubrique183&lang=en, accessed in January 2012.
202 Interview with gender coordinator for migration and asylum at DG JFS, May 2008.
203 The Proposals for Directives COM(2007) 637 final and COM(2007) 638 final were presented in parallel and were written to be compatible. As already said, the Blue Card proposal became a Directive in May 2009.
contributes to making women’s experiences, rights, and needs invisible, and reinforces the existing gender order (see, for instance, European Women’s Lobby 2004, 2005a).