is a lecturer in sociology at the university of Caen, in France, and a researcher at several French think tanks focusing on work, employment, and migration.
Picture © CP
To accept migrants we usually try to keep out, but only with a view to putting them to work: as counter-intuitive as it seems, this practice has become common in France and other Western countries. French sociologist Daniel Veron’s recent book (Migrant Work, the Other Relocation) shows that the attractiveness of migrant labour comes from their unequal rights, which were institutionalised through the employment of illegal immigrants and posted workers.
Interview by Athénaïs Gagey.
In your book, you call out a migratory utilitarianism. What does it consist of?
Daniel Veron: Since the end of the 19th century, migration policies have been torn between the need for labour and the refusal of foreigners – a refusal fuelled by racist considerations, and even, at the time, eugenicist ones. Foreigners were seen as undesirable, and yet they were economically indispensable. So how could this contradiction be solved? At the end of the 19th century, for example, in British Columbia, Canada used Chinese migration to build railroads. Political leaders said they were a “sub-race”, but one which they couldn’t do without. And as soon as the railroads were built, they started limiting Chinese migration.
De facto, Canada was a pioneer in the utilitarian use of foreign labour. In the 1920s, the country put in place temporary contracts, like the ones we had in France after the war, to meet the need for labour and farming. In the post-war period and the 1960s, these programs which were initially sector-based spread first to qualified work, then to unqualified labour. Today there are many of them, in France too: even if they take other forms. These tools are emblematic: we want labour, but without caring much for the labourer. They’re meant to go home one day, so that the use of foreign labour can be compatible with restrictive migration policies.
‘The exploitation of migrant work uses a price difference which stems from a gap in worker’s rights’
From your book we get the impression that migrant labour is as undesirable as it is necessary…
Ever since there have been job markets and rights given to workers, countries in the northern hemisphere have always used foreign labourers, whose rights are downgraded. By excluding these workers from the full package of rights, a price difference was created between two segments of the labour force: foreigners became much cheaper to employ than domestic workers.
The exploitation of migrant work uses a price difference which stems from a gap in worker’s rights. Today, this is institutionalised through two systems: first, the use of illegal immigrants. Second, increasingly, the use of secondment contracts.
Let’s start with the undocumented migrants...
During the post-war period, when these countries were rebuilding, immigrant labour played an important role in Europe and the US. With the oil crisis in 1970, the door was closed to legal immigration…
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