REGINE Regularisations in Europe Final Report - European ...

enefiting from regularisation has significantly increased, as has the number of family members.
Suffice it to say that the different profiles above all indicate different structural conditions and
migration patterns in the two countries and in the case of Spain, significant changes of structural
conditions and migration patterns over time. In more general terms, the limited comparison of data on
Spain and the US suggests that outcomes of individual regularisation programmes cannot be easily
extrapolated to different periods of time and different programmes. In a similar vein, comparisons of
outcomes of different programmes in different countries need to take into account possible structural
differences between countries which might explain the particular characteristics of one or another
programme.
These caveats notwithstanding, the OECD survey of 2000 suggests that, despite country specificities,
regularised migrants can generally be found in the same sectors as the legal migrant workforce –
notably agriculture, small industry, tourism, hotels and catering, and household and business services.
The highest concentration of irregular immigrants, however, can be observed in agriculture,
manufacturing, construction and public works and certain categories of services. 53 The review
concludes that the high concentration “reflects the systematic attempts by firms to minimise labour
costs (wages and social insurance contributions) and maximise labour flexibility (with highly
intensive work for limited periods in time).” 54 Put in somewhat different terms, there are important
structural factors contributing to illegal employment that lie in the very nature of the sectors
concerned – namely high competition, low profit margins, and cyclical fluctuations in labour demand.
In France and Italy, the review reports, there is a major concentration of regularised workers in
manufacturing, with textiles/garment and construction/public works employing the bulk of illegal
immigrants in France. The review argues that the decline of these industries, rather than leading to
their outright disappearance, leads companies to systematically resort to “subcontracting, and in some
cases, to cascading subcontracting”, both of which are closely associated with illegal employment. 55
The OECD review further notes that “[t]he development of subcontracting is part of a process
whereby labour management is totally or partially externalised by encouraging salaried workers to
acquire self-employed status.” In this context of “concealed dependent employment” it is often “small
and medium-sized enterprises that enhance the flexibility of the production system and adjust to
economic shifts”. Illegal work carried out by illegal migrants is – in some sectors – an essential
ingredient to successful flexibilisation of production processes and regularisation potentially reduces
the flexibility achieved by using irregular work. In other sectors, notably in personal services, and in
particular in domestic services, other processes are at work and illegal migrant employment often goes
along with a broader rise in employment in this sector. Thus, many of the jobs created have only been
created because of the availability of cheap and flexible migrant labour: were costs to increase (for
example by requiring employers to pay minimum wages, taxes and social security contributions in the
context of regularisation programmes), a certain share of jobs could be lost.
53 OECD Secretariat (2000): op. cit. p.59
54 Ibid., p.60
55 Ibid., p.61
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