Migrants at Work and the Division of Labour Law

Abstract

This is the opening chapter of the edited collection Costello & Freedland (eds) Migrants at Work: Immigration and Vulnerability in Labour Law (OUP, 2014). Drawing on the wide-ranging contributions to that collection, it identifies the intersection between migration law and labour law, and explores the analytical and normative significance of that intersection. The fact of immigration, and more particularly the various kinds of status which migration law accords to immigrants, are a source of divisiveness in labour law. Existing divisions within labour law, both between labour law’s objectives and its subjects, are exacerbated, and new divisions created. We do not posit the figure of the migrant as vulnerable, but rather identify how migration law creates vulnerability by distorting the employment relationship. In particular, migration law often increases the dependency between worker and employer, and exacerbates the precariousness of the relationship. We identify the unresolved normative tension between the objectives of expanding employers’ access to migrant workers; protecting the employment prospects and conditions of local worker; and acknowledging the importance of migration for the life chances and even, in some instances, survival of migrants. Various regulatory strategies to overcome these tensions and heal these divisions are explored, across migration, human rights and labour law.