New mobilities in Europe: Polish migration to Ireland post-2004 9781526111579

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New mobilities in Europe Polish migration to Ireland post-2004

Torben Krings, Elaine Moriarty, James Wickham, Alicja Bobek and Justyna Salamońska

New mobilities in Europe

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New mobilities in Europe Polish migration to Ireland post-2004 Torben Krings, Elaine Moriarty, James Wickham, Alicja Bobek, and Justyna Salamońska

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan

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Copyright © Torben Krings, Elaine Moriarty, James Wickham, Alicja Bobeck and Justyna Salamońska 2013 The right of Torben Krings, Elaine Moriarty, James Wickham, Alicja Bobeck and Justyna Salamońska to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for

ISBN 978 0 7190 8809 4 hardback First published 2013 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Typeset by SPi Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India

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Contents

List of figures and tables Contributors Preface and acknowledgements

page vi vii viii

Introduction

1

1

New mobilities in Europe today

7

2

Researching migration: a Qualitative Panel Study and workplace studies

24

From ‘boom to bust’: Polish migrants in the Irish labour market

36

Routes into employment: migrant aspirations and employer strategies

58

5

Employment conditions and the culture of work

77

6

‘Boundaryless careers’: mobility across organisations and nations

95

3 4

7 8

Worklife connections: technologies of mobility and transnational lives

111

Looking back: worklife pathways in a boom-to-bust economy

123

Conclusion: new mobilities in the new Europe

136

Appendices Bibliography Index

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143 148 160

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Figures and tables

Figures 1.1 2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6

The migration continuum page 10 The Qualitative Panel Study: social time, individual time 34 Net job growth by sector 1993–2000 and 2000–2007 (in thousands) 38 Total employment of Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 15 years and over (in thousands) 40 Inflow of NMS nationals to Ireland (four largest groups) (2004–2009) 43 Employment rates of Irish and non-Irish nationals, 15–64 years, 2006 (%) 46 Net job losses of Irish and non-Irish nationals by employment sector (in thousands) (2008, Q1–2011, Q1) 53 Non-Irish nationals on the Live Register (2008–2010) 54 Tables

2.1

2.2 3.1 3.2 3.3

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Social class position of Polish nationals in four employment sectors (in relation to total employment in the sector, 2006 (%)) Socio-demographic characteristics of Polish interviewees at the time of interview Wave 1 (spring 2008) Educational attainments of Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 15 years and over, 2006 (%) Occupational attainments of Irish and non-Irish nationals, 15–64 years, 2006 (%) Net trade union density of Irish and non-Irish nationals in a number of employment sectors, 2008 (%)

28 30 45 47 51

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Contributors

Torben Krings is Assistant Professor in the Department of Economic and Organisational Sociology, Johannes Kepler University Linz. Elaine Moriarty is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. James Wickham is Professor of Sociology, Director of the Employment Research Centre and Dean, Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, Trinity College Dublin. Alicja Bobek is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Trinity College Dublin. Justyna Salamon´ska is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Legal and Social Sciences, University of Chieti-Pescara.

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Preface and acknowledgements

Today mass emigration has returned to Ireland. However, in the mid 2000s of all OECD countries apart from Canada (and tiny Luxembourg), Ireland had the highest proportion of its population born abroad. What actually drove these figures was mass immigration from Europe, above all from Poland and other new member states (NMS) of the EU. In this new situation, Irish discussion of migration remained curiously traditional: it focused on questions of ethnicity, integration and citizenship. These were issues which had pre-occupied Europe since the classic period of postWorld War Two immigration. However, unlike the Gastarbeiter of that distant past, the Poles arriving in Ireland after 2004 were fully entitled to work since they were European citizens; cheap air travel enabled them to travel back to Poland easily; above all, it was unclear whether they intended to remain in Ireland. Using data sets such as the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), researchers at the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) had already begun what was to become an impressive corpus of papers on the labour market participation of migrants. Although crucial for any understanding of contemporary Irish immigration, this research could say little about the actual experience and aspirations of the migrants themselves. Other Irish researchers had begun more qualitative studies of immigration, but these tended to focus on issues of identity and culture. There seemed to be very little concern with the work that the mass of migrants were doing and what they themselves actually wanted. I was sensitised to such lacunae by our work in the Employment Research Centre (ERC) on the Irish software industry. We had discovered that this industry, an icon of the Celtic Tiger Irish economic boom, now not only depended on the importation of skilled workers, it also depended on frequent business air travel by its Irish professionals and managers. There was therefore a lot more to migration than conventional discussions of immigration allowed. Indeed the boundary between migration and ‘mobility’ was often blurred. In 2006, such considerations prompted my proposal for a study of the careers and aspirations of Polish migrants working in Ireland. This would have two key components. Developing the methodology of an earlier ERC study of

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PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ix

women workers in the service sector, a ‘Qualitative Panel Study’ (QPS) would use repeated interviews over several years with a comparatively small number of migrants. It would trace the careers of migrants and how these related to their – possibly changing – expectations of Ireland. Secondly, a series of workplace studies would identify the ‘employment strategies’ of employers and managers and thus see how migrants were deployed within Irish workplaces. Migrants’ work would therefore be studied from both sides of the employment relationship. Finally, this fieldwork would be contextualised by monitoring of labour market statistics. In spring 2007, the ‘Migrant Careers and Aspirations’ project became one of the six projects of the Trinity Immigration Initiative (TII). This research programme in Trinity College Dublin had brought together colleagues from sociology, social policy and education; it generated studies that ranged from English-language acquisition in Irish schools to migrants’ experience of the justice system. The programme funded a large cohort of doctoral students working across the six projects. The TII liaised with both migrant organisations and state institutions, it held public lectures and research seminars and it culminated with an international conference on ‘New Migrations, New Challenges’ in summer 2010 (http://www.tcd.ie/immigration). In summer 2007, the Migrant Careers and Aspirations project team was formed under my direction with Elaine Moriarty as research fellow and Justyna Salamońska as doctoral research assistant. In due course, the project team grew to five: Alicja Bobek soon joined as a second research assistant and in 2008 Torben Krings became the second research fellow. The QPS was directed by Elaine and the interview guides were developed by the entire team. The Polish language interviews, transcriptions and translations were by Alicja and Justyna; Torben interviewed employers and managers; Elaine and Torben also carried out interviews with experts and representatives of relevant organisations. Much of the ERC’s earlier work had been in projects funded by the European Union’s Framework research programmes. The EU insists that such projects have plans for ‘dissemination’ and ‘user involvement’. While academics often resent it, these programmes have stimulated researchers to connect their work to the wider society without becoming the appendage of a lobby group or the expression of a predefined ideological stance. Building on this experience, the Migrant Careers project had a small informal advisory group with participation from government bodies, migrant organisations, trade unions and employers’ organisations. During the lifetime of the project, we also issued four newsletters to communicate our findings to the media, policy-makers, activists and the research community. We held two research symposia with migration scholars from Ireland, the UK and Poland, but we ended the project with a policy conference which brought these colleagues together with our policy stakeholders. All our publications have used the interview data sets collected by the team, but they are also the result of a team writing effort. One person however was always responsible for the final draft and we designated him or her as the ‘first author’. Nowhere has this been more important than in the writing of the book.

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Myself, Elaine and Torben began work on an initial draft as early as 2010, and we had completed chapter drafts by autumn 2011. Torben then took responsibility for turning these drafts into the final manuscript. Separately from this collective effort, both Justyna and Alicja used their interviews from the QPS as well as other material for their doctoral theses, which they successfully defended during academic year 2011/12. TII was made possible through a generous philanthropic donation from AIB Bank. All the team gratefully acknowledge this valuable funding: the views expressed in this and other publications are of course entirely our own. We further thank David Went (then Chairman of Trinity Foundation) for his valuable input and support in the lead up to the launch of the TII. The TII itself would have been impossible without the vision, determination and commitment of Ronit Lentin who was the academic instigator of the entire programme. Within the TII, the other principal investigators provided critical support and encouragement: David Little, Eoin O’Sullivan, Peter Mühlau, Robbie Gilligan and Ronit herself. Trinity’s Institute for International Integration Studies (IIIS) provided accommodation and administrative support for the TII. We therefore thank successive directors of the IIIS, Philip Lane and Alan Matthews. Leslie McCartney, the TII research officer, provided invaluable administrative support for the project and kept our finances in order; she was ably helped by Colette Kelleher of the IIIS. Links with our various stakeholders were facilitated by the TII public liaison officer, Gerry Danaher. We received many helpful suggestions from members of our advisory group, in particular Brian McCormick, Conor Hand, David Joyce, Kazik Anhalt, Siobhan O’Donoghue and Tony Donohoe; we were helped by members of the Polish community in Dublin, in particular Barnaba Dorda and Anna Paś, as well as staff of the Polish embassy. All of us learnt much from other researchers working in the area. There are too many to be named individually, but we would like to especially thank Adrian Favell, Alan Barrett, Anne White, Breda Gray, Catherine Casey, Emilio Reyneri, Ettore Recchi, Izabela Grabowska-Lusińska, John Eade, Jon Kvist, Maeve Holohan, Marek Kupiszewski, Marek Okólski, Martin Ruhs, Michael Doherty, Philip J. O’Connell and Sharon Bolton. We would also like to thank the staff at Manchester University Press for their forbearance and support. Qualitative social research like this depends on interviews with a large number of people. We would especially like to thank for their time the managers and employers whom we interviewed for the workplace studies, members of Polish organisations in Dublin and representatives of other institutions. Above all, our QPS methodology demanded from each of our panel members fully six interviews spread over two years. They cannot of course be named, but our research would have been impossible without them. We hope this book will be for them a testimony to their work and life in Ireland. James Wickham Dublin, 18 July 2012

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Introduction

I remember the stress on the Austrian border when we were crossing it, when we were going there with the labourers … It was an illegal job, a completely different, different world, the one from before the EU … There was this division, this definite division between East and West and I think that over there something like this still exists … but not in here, not in here. (Oskar) It (moving to Ireland) was totally by chance. It was during my second year in high school that I decided that I was going to go abroad somewhere. I wanted to take a gap year … and I simply wanted to learn English and get to know let’s say some more interesting cultures. (Olga)

Oskar moved to Ireland from Poland in 2002, two years before Poland and seven other countries from Central and Eastern Europe joined the European Union (EU). He initially just wanted to stay for a year but soon found work as an architect in the buoyant construction sector and stayed on. He even progressed into a managerial position. After around five years with the same company, he changed job and became a project manager in another Irish construction company. Among the reasons he was hired were his bilingual skills and knowledge of the Polish market as his new company began to target the Polish market in the midst of a deep economic crisis in Ireland. As part of his new job, he now frequently travels to Poland. Olga moved to Ireland in 2006 and began to work as an au pair. After some months, she left this position as she wanted to live on her own and get a ‘normal job’. She soon found a job as a waitress in a Dublin restaurant and since then has worked in a number of different hospitality establishments in the city. In spite of some rather unpleasant work experiences, she was very positive about her time in Ireland. She became more self-reliant, learned English and earned some money to finance a mobile lifestyle. After a brief stint in the UK, she decided to leave the

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‘old’ world for the ‘new’ and moved to North America. Over there, she again started working in a restaurant. By now she had effectively become a ‘transnational waitress’. In spite of rather different career trajectories, what these two stories have in common is a new experience of mobility. They illustrate how EU enlargement and an open labour market have transformed the Polish migration experience in Ireland. Ireland was, together with the UK and Sweden, the only ‘old’ EU member states that opened the labour market to the citizens of the new EU member states (NMS) in 2004. This policy in conjunction with an unprecedented economic boom in Ireland and severe labour market problems in Poland triggered largescale migration. Whereas according to the 2002 Census around 2,000 Polish migrants were living in Ireland, four years later the Census enumerators counted 63,000 Polish nationals in the country. Five years later again, this number had risen to over 120,000. By all accounts, this has been a dramatic increase. What were the particular features of this East–West migration? To what extent did these movements represent a new form of mobility in the enlarged EU? What has been the experience of Polish migrants in an open labour market? What were their plans and aspirations? How did they access employment? To what extent did lifestyle choices matter? How did their careers develop? What has been the impact of the recession as Ireland has gone from ‘boom to bust’? This book is about Polish migration to Ireland and the wider implications of increased cross-border mobility in Europe. At first sight, the mass movement of young Poles to Ireland after 2004 resembled traditional labour migration – the push of high unemployment in Poland, the pull of a tight labour market in Ireland. However, it is the main contention of the book that this migration goes beyond classical patterns of labour migration. Most noticeably, these movements are characterised by new mobility patterns. As ‘free movers’ (Favell, 2008a), Polish migrants are not only more mobile across countries but also within national labour markets. This has opened up new work opportunities, career chances and lifestyle choices. Arguably, Polish migrants are part of a new generation of mobile Europeans who increasingly make use of their free movement rights in pursuit of flexible worklife pathways in the new European mobility space. In many aspects, intra-European mobility poses a challenge to traditional understandings of migration. Whereas migration was traditionally seen as a one-off move to a new country, contemporary movements are often multidirectional and transient, blurring the distinction between migration and other forms of mobility such as tourism, commuting and

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INTRODUCTION

3

student migration. As there is increased mobility not only across countries but also across organisations, the ‘boundaryless career’ (Arthur, 1994) increasingly shapes the work experience of mobile Europeans. While work continues to feature prominently, this is no longer the classical pattern of labour migration. Many of these movements are undertaken for reasons other than conventional economic motivations, and even apparently economic movements turn out to involve a lot more than just market rationality (King, 2002). Sometimes the purpose of work is simply to finance a mobile lifestyle. Instead of assuming that migration is simply for economic gain, we need to uncover individual migrants’ aspirations and, furthermore, accept that these may well change over time. At the centre of this book are detailed accounts of the working lives of a group of twenty-two Polish migrants in Dublin. Almost all of them arrived in Ireland in the aftermath of EU enlargement in 2004. They were young, relatively well-educated and found employment in a variety of occupations, ranging from general operatives and less-skilled service sector positions to managerial and professional positions. To examine their worklife pathways in an open labour market, we interviewed them at regular intervals for two years as part of a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS). We were thus able to trace the careers and aspirations of this group of Polish migrants as they encountered new problems and opportunities. Whether they stayed in Ireland, returned to Poland or moved on to other countries, we tracked their careers and aspirations through six interview waves. The book thus represents one of the first applications of qualitative longitudinal research to the study of migration and employment. Although it is one of the main arguments of the book that contemporary cross-border mobility in Europe is more than just ‘labour migration’, employment and the workplace remain crucial to the study of migration. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Ireland experienced an unprecedented economic boom. Polish migrants entered a ‘goldrush’ labour market with a seemingly endless supply of jobs and demand for new labour. In times of a rapidly expanding workforce, there were considerable job opportunities not only at the bottom of the labour market, but across the occupational structure. To a considerable extent, this migration was demand-driven. However, this in itself does not tell us much about how employers were recruiting migrants and what they were looking for. Hence, we also carried out interviews with employers and managers in those employment sectors in which the participants of our QPS were located: construction, hospitality, financial services and IT. This has been complemented with interviews with the social partners and other stakeholders.

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The book therefore takes an actor-centred approach to the study of migration. However, the choices of both sides of the employment relationship can only be properly understood if the broader socio-economic context is taken into account. Hence, the book locates the actions of both migrants and employers in the particular conjuncture that was Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century: an unprecedented economic boom, a massive demand for additional labour and an open labour market. It was within this specific context that Ireland became a major destination for Polish and other NMS migrants who were quick to make use of their new free movement rights in the enlarged EU. Outline of the book Chapter one outlines the conceptual argument of the book. We argue that East–West migration is characterised by new mobility patterns which distinguishes it from previous migration movements. These new mobilities are facilitated, in particular, by the EU free movement regime, but also by low-cost air travel and new information and communication technologies (ICTs). These developments provide the context for a more individualistic form of migration which is less reliant on dense ethnic networks. As ‘free movers’, Polish and other European migrants have new mobility opportunities and lifestyle choices that go beyond the employment experience. Chapter two outlines the methodology. We argue that a QPS is a suitable methodological tool to study the new mobility patterns of East–West migration. Using six waves of qualitative interviews, we were able to link the individual work biographies of migrants to the changing context of the Irish labour market as it went from ‘boom to bust’. Further, the chapter explains why we have chosen to study the career trajectories of Polish migrants and the strategies and attitudes of employers in four employment sectors: construction, hospitality, financial services and IT. Chapter three locates Polish migration post-2004 in the broader Irish labour market context. It shows how a booming and open labour market triggered large-scale migration from the NMS. Ireland’s goldrush labour market was able to integrate large numbers of migrants into the workforce without leading to major displacements of the native population. However, in the context of an unprecedented economic downturn, the labour market situation has dramatically changed, as migrants have been particularly affected by rising unemployment. Chapter four is the first chapter based on our interviews and examines the initial plans and aspirations of migrants and the recruitment

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INTRODUCTION

5

strategies of employers. We show that economic motives, in particular the search for a higher income, were important reasons that influenced the move abroad. However, there were also less straightforward noninstrumental reasons, including the search for adventure and travel. Upon arrival, migrants found employment relatively quickly, utilising formal and informal recruitment channels. On the employer side, we show how Ireland’s open labour market policy in 2004 transformed the recruitment strategies of firms. Whereas pre-2004 employers were more likely to recruit migrants from outside of the EU, enlargement provided management with a readily accessible pool of qualified labour at their own doorstep. Chapter five addresses the workplace experiences of Polish migrants. We show how the migrant experience in less-skilled occupations has been one of informality and casual employment. However, such ‘bad jobs’ were not necessarily experienced as such, in particular when comparisons were made to Poland. This was even more the case in relation to skilled occupations where participants reported a rather positive work culture. Moreover, some valued the multinational character of the Irish workplace. Chapter six analyses the career trajectories of our respondents in the Dublin labour market. We document how for some the employment experience began to resemble a traditional career, moving upwards within a clearly defined occupational space. Others, however, took up jobs purely to earn money as quickly as possible to finance a mobile lifestyle or for purposes back in Poland. Many changed their jobs, some of them frequently, especially when they first arrived in Dublin. Tracking migrants as they moved through the Dublin labour market and beyond illustrated how their careers were often ‘boundaryless’ (Arthur, 1994) in that employment was not confined to a single firm, occupation or indeed nation state. Chapter seven examines the worklife connections of Polish migrants. It shows how new mobility patterns were enabled by ‘technologies of mobility’, both physical and virtual. Of particular importance were new ICTs to sustain new networks in Ireland but also to maintain links to ‘home’. Moreover, connections to Poland were maintained through frequent home visits, made possible by low-cost air travel. Thus, migrants were able to live a ‘transnational life’ and to discover a new world of mobility. Chapter eight examines how our participants assessed their time in Ireland and how they envisaged their future. Whereas some thought that they advanced in the labour market, others felt they remained entrapped in low-wage jobs. Nevertheless, even for the latter the move abroad

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was seen in a positive light as they acquired new skills and experiences and felt they became more mature and independent. However, the economic crisis and rising unemployment meant that our respondents had to re-adjust their strategies to a dramatically altered economic environment. For some, this was a factor in returning to Poland or moving on elsewhere. For others, however, it meant staying on and trying to adapt to work and life in ‘Post-Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. In the concluding chapter, we summarise the main findings and reflect upon the merits of a QPS to study the mobility patterns of migrants. We argue that a QPS is well-suited to study the mobility behaviour of migrants and to document how their experiences can change over time. Our interview sample was confined to a relatively small number of Polish migrants in Ireland. However, we suggest that their mobility patterns are indicative of a broader trend across Europe. While the mass migration that ensued post-2004 was quite exceptional in its scale, especially younger and more educated Europeans increasingly make use of their free movement rights in the new European mobility space. By 2012, this had become more visible as, with the economic crisis, a growing number of Southern Europeans were heading towards the more prosperous countries of Northern Europe.

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1

New mobilities in Europe today

Since EU enlargement in 2004, tens of thousands of mainly young NMS citizens have ‘gone West’. Arguably, these large-scale movements have transformed the European migration landscape. The often lamented ‘immobile European’ appears to be a thing of the past. What are the particular features of this migration? In this chapter, we develop the conceptual argument of the book. We argue that NMS migration is above all characterised by new mobility patterns which are indicative of a broader trend across Europe. These new mobilities are facilitated by the EU free movement regime and new travel opportunities. Unlike previous generations of immigrants, Polish and other EU migrants are no longer dependent upon a work or residence permit. This has inserted a new form of migrant agency. As ‘free movers’, they can move across national borders and change jobs within national labour markets in what we term the new European mobility space. In the light of new mobility opportunities, the ‘boundaryless career’ in which employment is no longer confined to a single firm, occupation or indeed nation state becomes a distinct possibility. While work and employment remain crucial for this cross-border mobility, the move abroad is increasingly inspired by lifestyle choices as well. In spite of some differences between West and East European migrants in relation to motives and socio-economic class position, we argue that there is increasingly a shared mobility experience across Europe, especially among the younger and better educated. What migrants from both the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ EU have in common is the pursuit of flexible worklife pathways in the new European mobility space. We now sketch out these themes in more detail. From migration to mobility? At the start of the twenty-first century, the sheer diversity of migration is becoming obvious. In Europe, there are multiple forms of movement, ranging from the circulation of professional workers and work-related

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commuting to student mobility and North–South retirement migration, prompting calls for a ‘new map of European migration’ (King, 2002). Whereas migration was traditionally seen as the permanent movement from country A to country B, many contemporary movements are more transient, blurring the distinction between migration and mobility. In particular, East–West migration is perhaps better characterised as mobility because of its more short-term and circular movements (Wallace, 2002). In the light of a greater emphasis on movement, it might be analytically more appropriate to treat contemporary forms of migration as a subcategory of mobility. While physical movement as opposed to migration as such has long been neglected within sociology, in the last decade there has been a ‘mobility turn’ as exemplified by the work of John Urry (2000, 2007) and journals such as Mobilities. This mobility turn can be seen to involve a strong and a weak version (Wickham, 2007). A strong version assumes that the very nature of social life has changed as society is increasingly seen as comprising of ‘flows’ and becoming ‘liquid’ (e.g. Bauman, 2005). The strong mobility thesis is oblivious towards the fact that ‘flows’ of people, capital and information are still embedded in particular places and locations. To a considerable extent, opportunities for mobility are still shaped by political structures and public policies. Just because people move, they do not enter a world without constraints – as the metaphor of flows seems to suggest. In turn, the weak version of the mobility thesis draws our attention not just to the study of movements, be they physical or virtual, but also to the study of location: how particular activities are located in particular physical places to which or from which people then move. This leads us to consider public policy decisions which facilitate mobility – an obvious case in point is the open labour market policy of the UK and Ireland at the time of EU enlargement in 2004. Further, it turns our attention to the technologies that enable people to move and to stay connected – the technologies of transport and communication. This weak version of the mobility turn highlights how mobility is an important, and hitherto largely neglected, topic of research for sociology, without making any claims about a new ‘grand theory’ of society (Wickham, 2007). Studying Polish migration to Ireland in terms of mobility does indeed raise questions that traditional migration studies would ignore or downplay. Travelling and the movement from one country to another is part of the analysis, not simply a hole in time. More fundamentally, thinking in terms of mobility involves a rupture with the assumed priority of permanent settlement and the ‘move–work–settle’ model (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010: 132). This poses a challenge to traditional concepts

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NEW MOBILITIES IN EUROPE TODAY

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of assimilation, multiculturalism and interculturalism, whether held by scholars, policy-makers or even the general public. Such ‘philosophies of integration’ (Favell, 2001) are usually based on the assumption of permanent settlement of migrants and have the individual nation state as their main frame of reference. However, as cross-border mobility in Europe has become more transient and circular, traditional concepts of integration and citizenship are less capable of capturing these movements. From the perspective of EU migrants, the debate over whether their country of residence has a tradition of citizenship, variously described as ‘exclusionary’, ‘assimilationist’ or ‘multicultural’ (Castles and Miller, 2009), is largely irrelevant as they already are European citizens and hence in possession of certain rights and protections which transcend the individual member state. Hence, attempts to conceptualise intraEuropean migration have to go beyond the nation state and take seriously the evolving transnational social space of the EU in which these new mobilities occur. It has to be acknowledged, of course, that temporary migration is not necessarily new. Some forms of temporary and seasonal migration were already observed in the second half of the nineteenth century when the first modern large-scale population movements occurred (Hobsbawn, 1997: 237–238). In particular, in the emerging Anglosphere there was considerable movement back and forth. For instance, it is estimated that as many as 40 per cent of all English and Welsh migrants returned home, though the proportion was lower for Scottish and Irish migrants (Richards, 2004: 169). Even historically, migration was not necessarily about settlement. This was equally true for the ‘guest worker’ period of post-World War Two labour migration. For instance, in Germany, the country that is often considered as the paradigmatic example of a (failed) guest worker policy, the majority of foreign workers did not settle down. Among those 18.5 million foreign workers who arrived between 1960 and 1973, 75 per cent returned to their home countries as envisaged in the guest worker programmes (Martin et al., 2006: 86–87).1 In spite of widespread assumptions to the contrary, most guest workers really were guest workers. Even in that period, movement for permanent settlement was simply one end of the migration continuum (Figure 1.1). In particular in relation to recent East–West migration, more transient forms of cross-border mobility have emerged, even predating recent EU enlargement (Wallace and Stola, 2001). The collapse of the Eastern bloc and the transformation of the former state socialist countries into market economies generated new migratory movements in

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Permanent residence in country of origin

Permanent residence in country of destination

Circular migration

Return migration

Figure 1.1 The migration continuum

particular to Germany and Austria. Much of this cross-border mobility was work-related and occurred either as part of a ‘new Gastarbeiter system’ (Rudolph, 1996) or rather unorganised as part of irregular work arrangements in the growing informal economy (Wilpert, 1998). Facilitated by geographical proximity and the possibility to frequently cross borders, much of these movements from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) were rather short-term and circular as most migrants only stayed for a limited period of time (Fihel et al., 2006). These more transient movements led to the emergence of ‘transnational social spaces’ (Pries, 2003: 445) in regions such as Berlin–West Poland or Vienna– Bratislava where many migrants were effectively commuting between ‘work’ and ‘home’. Some authors have observed a link between economic restructuring and more temporary forms of migration. In this reading, a trend towards short-term mobility reflects the exigencies of a European labour market that increasingly demands flexible and casual workers (Castles and Miller, 2009: 234–235; Wallace, 2001: 54–56). These new ‘guest workers’ from CEE were still largely confined to less-skilled jobs in agriculture, construction and the growing service sector of ‘post-industrial’ economies in Western Europe (Wallace, 2001). As many of these migrants had no legal residence status, were working irregularly or dependent upon a work permit, their choices and opportunities were still rather limited. This situation, however, changed when Poland and seven other former state socialist countries acceded to the EU in May 2004, which turned their citizens into EU citizens virtually overnight. Former ‘guest workers’ had effectively become ‘free movers’, at least in countries such as Ireland, the UK and Sweden that immediately opened their labour markets to the new EU citizens. To what extent has this new regulatory environment changed their migration experience?

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The new European mobility space New mobility patterns in Europe are inextricably linked to the EU free movement regime which arguably represents ‘the most open cross-state movement policy worldwide’ (Recchi, 2006: 71). EU citizens have the right to move to any other EU member state and take up residency and employment. This right to free movement was one of the central pillars of the process of European integration and was subsequently extended from the free movement of workers to the free movement of persons. Already in 1957 the free movement of labour, goods, services and capital were established as part of the Treaty of Rome on the European Economic Community (EEC) (Boswell and Geddes, 2011: 181). However, the enactment of the free movement principle proceeded at a rather slow pace as individual EEC member states were quite reluctant to cede control over a sensitive issue such as labour mobility. It was not until 1968 that a number of EEC regulations abolished various restrictions on the free movement of labour and established the principle of equal treatment between nationals and EU migrant workers. Since then, the European Court of Justice through its case law has strengthened the position of mobile European citizens by extending the scope of the free movement provisions from workers to persons (Recchi, 2006: 57–59). The 1992 Treaty on the European Union marked the final culmination of this development as it introduced EU citizenship, including the right to move and reside in any of the member states regardless of job status or employment. While this right can be qualified if EU migrants do not have ‘sufficient resources’, it transformed the meaning of European mobility. Effectively, ‘migrant workers’ had become ‘EU movers’ (Favell and Recchi, 2009: 9). Whereas initially the main rationale for the free movement doctrine was to create a flexible European labour market, there is a growing political dimension to this right as it increasingly functions as an ‘EU legitimation tool’ (Recchi, 2008: 213). Freedom of movement is often regarded as one of the most attractive features of the EU and represents to many European citizens the essence of European citizenship (Eurobarometer, 2010). While the number of EU citizens living abroad remains relatively low, it has steadily increased in the last two decades. This is no longer an ‘elite migration’ of a few as the opportunity to move across the EU also appeals to middle-class individuals to enhance their economic or cultural capital (Kennedy, 2010; Recchi, 2006: 76). Although the right to free movement has at its core the right to seek employment, the fact that it is not confined to workers has facilitated other forms of more lifestyle-orientated mobility as well, including

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the search for a better ‘quality of life’ or even ‘love migration’ – following a partner to another country (King, 2002; O’Reilly, 2007). As part of the process of European integration, the welfare rights of mobile EU citizens have been strengthened. To reduce the barriers to cross-border mobility, the EU Directive 1408/71 of 1971 stipulated four principles that should determine the welfare rights of EU migrants: 1) member states cannot discriminate against resident EU nationals from another member state in the field of social security; 2) EU migrant workers can take out their welfare benefits in a different member state to the one where they were earned; 3) eligibility periods of benefits over different time periods can be aggregated; and 4) the setting of benefits can be accumulated on the basis of the time spent in the respective countries (Kvist, 2004: 304). In practice, however, the portability of welfare rights including pension entitlements continues to pose a challenge (Monti, 2010). While the institutions of the EU provide a legal framework of enforceable rights which stretch across the member states, European citizens move between very different national systems of social security and employment. The extent to which entitlements can be transferred in practice potentially restrains mobility, just as the extent to which qualifications are recognised (Dobson, 2009: 123). Nevertheless, in spite of some remaining mobility hurdles, the EU has effectively evolved into a transnational social space with the right to free movement at its core. The right to free labour market access, however, was restricted in 2004 when eight countries from CEE joined the EU. In the light of widespread concerns about ‘social dumping’ and a ‘race to the bottom’, most ‘old’ member states imposed transitional restriction for citizens from the NMS (Donaghy and Teague, 2006). The only countries that immediately opened their labour market were Ireland, Sweden and the UK. In subsequent years, however, most other EU-15 member states removed the labour market restrictions (Dobson, 2009). The last ones who did so were Austria and Germany in 2011. Since then, Polish and other migrants from the 2004 accession countries have full free movement rights across the enlarged EU-27.2 What is crucial for the argument of this book is the extent to which the changed regulatory environment post-2004 has transformed the migration experience of NMS nationals. Unlike their often clandestine predecessors in the 1990s or indeed the ‘guest workers’ of the 1960s and 1970s, Polish and other NMS migrants have free movement rights and are no longer bound by a residence or work permit. This has inserted a new form of migrant agency as argued by Galasińska and Kozłowska (2009: 90): ‘people can choose when and where to live, rather than

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having to grab any opportunity to migrate as it was in the case of previous economic migrants from Poland during the time of travel and work restrictions’. As became clear in the aftermath of EU enlargement in 2004, many Polish migrants chose to live in Ireland and the UK. However, this was not only facilitated by the open labour market policy of the latter two countries, but also by new technologies of mobility, and in particular low-cost air travel. New technologies of mobility and transnational lives In the 1950s and 1960s, migrants from Southern Italy and Turkey took several days to travel to Germany in trains operated by national railway companies. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Polish migrants would have travelled to Ireland on flights that would have taken less than three hours. Arguably, these new travel opportunities have transformed the migration experience, just as changes in communication technology have enabled migrants to maintain social relations over long distance. In particular, the emergence of low-cost air travel has become a ‘defining feature’ (Burrell, 2011) of recent East–West mobility. The deregulation of European air transport has allowed for the growth of low-cost carriers (LCCs) such as Ryanair and EasyJet. Initially, these routes were largely confined to Western Europe. However, Eastern enlargement has brought with it an expansion of the liberalised European air space and a substantial increase in East–West air travel. Whereas in 1991 there were just over 100 flight connections between Western and East Central Europe, this had increased to 500 in 2008, with LCCs accounting for around 60 per cent of the air traffic on these routes (Dobruszkes, 2009: 427–428). Arguably, LCCs have ‘redrawn the European map of accessibility and redefined labour markets, at least for some workers’ (Williams, 2009a: 313). What is noticeable is the diversity of the new East–West routes (Burrell, 2011). In the past, airline routes had focused on a few major hubs, but LCCs initiated point-to-point flights from one regional airport direct to another (Williams and Baláž, 2009). This has created a certain flattening of European air travel. For instance, at the end of 2007 there were flight connections from twenty-two British airports to ten Polish cities, carrying almost 400,000 passengers in the single month of December (Pollard et al., 2008: 6). As already pointed out, temporary and circular migration is not necessarily a new development. However, the possibility of frequently travelling back and forth to destinations at long distance and at low cost

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certainly represents a new experience of mobility. Affordable air travel makes the initial migration decision easier and facilitates more shortterm and transient movements. Importantly, the initial move abroad is often followed by ‘post-migration mobility’ (Dobruszkes, 2009: 427), involving visits to the home country or indeed journeys to new destinations. Moreover, new East–West flight connections have given rise to other forms of mobility, involving new business travel and tourism (Dobruszkes, 2009). In addition to new travel opportunities, new ICTs also enable migrants to maintain transnational networks and stay in contact with ‘home’. New ICTs, including cheap telephony (mobile and landline), web-based social networking and email allow for instantaneous communication and shrinking of time and space (Castells, 2000). Hence the move abroad does not necessarily mean an end to previous social contacts as migrants can continue these contacts in virtual space (Komito and Bates, 2009). New communication technologies are not only of importance after the move but even before. In particular, websites offer information about the new destination, including job opportunities. Through the greater usage of these information sources, migration is likely to become more individualistic as migrants are less dependent on ethnic networks to secure a job. At the same time, and rather paradoxically, new ICTs may contribute to the emergence of ‘virtual ghettos’ as migrants have less incentives to make contacts with local people as they can create their own separate lives in the host country (Komito and Bates, 2009: 243). In any case, new ICTs in conjunction with new travel opportunities afford migrants the opportunity to live a transnational life as the boundaries between ‘home’ and ‘away’ become more blurred (Vertovec, 2004). The novelty of these technologies of mobility is less interconnection per se, but rather the dramatic acceleration of both the ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ of migration. However, it is important not to collapse into technological determinism – the belief that social processes are determined by technology. Where and how people move within Europe today hardly depends just on technology as political and economic factors remain paramount. Had Ireland not experienced an unprecedented economic boom and opened its labour market in 2004, it is inconceivable that the large-scale migration would have occurred. Further, distance is not reduced in the same way for everybody. For many young Polish people, Dublin has become closer to Warsaw, but for their Irish compatriots in Dublin, Sydney is probably closer – if closer means familiarity, people you know, jobs you can get.

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New physical and virtual mobilities have certainly transformed the migration experience. However, it is worth remembering that in spite of movement and flows, migrants are not constantly on the move as they remain embedded in particular locations and in particular workplaces. What were the types of jobs that Polish migrants carried out in these workplaces? Was it a case of ‘stuck at the bottom’ or a more diverse work experience? To what extent was this experience shaped by employer strategies and labour market institutions? Migration, employment and the workplace It is one of the main arguments of the book that contemporary crossborder mobility in Europe goes beyond classical patterns of labour migration. However, work and employment remains crucial to an understanding of recent East–West migration. The ‘pull’ factor of large-scale NMS migration was a buoyant labour market in the UK and Ireland. The ‘push’ factors were serious labour market difficulties and high unemployment in Poland and elsewhere. While the motives of Polish migrants were often more multifaceted than commonly assumed, they were above all looking for jobs. Whereas migrants during the ‘guest worker’ era were over-represented in less-skilled manufacturing jobs, contemporary migrant employment has shifted towards the service sector where migrants are over-represented not only in less-skilled jobs but also increasingly in more skilled positions (OECD, 2007). In particular, EU migrants are found across the occupational structure in Europe. However, there is a significant East–West divide in relation to occupational attainment. Whereas over 50 per cent of EU-15 migrants worked in high-skilled occupations in 2007, almost half of all NMS migrants were employed in less-skilled occupations (European Commission, 2008: 130). However, this does not necessarily mean that NMS migrants are the new ‘guest workers’. For a start, almost 40 per cent were employed in intermediate skill occupations and a non-negligible 12 per cent in high-skilled occupations across the EU. Moreover, cross-sectional data captures only one particular moment in time. Polish and other NMS migrants may experience initial downward mobility but then move up the occupational ladder. As they are no longer dependent upon a work permit, they certainly have more opportunities and choices than previous ‘generations of immigrants’, not least because ethnic hierarchies appear as more fluid in flexible labour markets such as the UK and Ireland (Kogan, 2007).

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As for those migrants who are employed in ‘bad’ low-skilled jobs, an important question is whether the job is perceived as such and how it relates to the worker’s personal biography. As migrants often operate on the basis of a ‘dual frame of reference’ (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003: 40), a low-wage job in Ireland may compare rather well to a job in Poland. Further, working conditions and employment relations may also appear as more favourable than those at home (Cieslik, 2011; see also Boyle, 2006). Further, migrants often have a different orientation towards work than local workers, in particular when they see their stay as only short-term. A job can be unpleasant and boring, but if it is only temporary and/or a stepping stone to something else, this is very different to when it is a job for life (Knox et al., 2011: 8). Moreover, especially young migrants may even prefer more flexible work arrangements including temporary contracts if it offers them the opportunity to pursue a mobile lifestyle (Conradson and Latham, 2005). Employers are often aware that migrants have a different orientation to work. This is likely to have implications for their recruitment decisions. The conventional wisdom is that firms recruit migrant labour because of a shortage of labour and skills. However, this view may be too simplistic. Often it is the social conditions of a particular job rather than labour shortages per se that makes it difficult to fill vacancies with local workers (Piore, 1979). Moreover, the demand for labour is not independent of the supply of labour. In other words, the number and quality of jobs to be filled is not fixed but often dependent upon the type of workers that employers can recruit (Anderson and Ruhs, 2008). In particular in some low-wage sectors, employers often look for a particular type of (migrant) labour that accepts precarious employment and low wages (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003). Employers prefer to hire employees with ‘good attitude’ to establish control in the workplace and to ‘reduce the indeterminacy of labour’ (Matthews and Ruhs, 2007: 12). Some research suggests that employers do not only differentiate between indigenous and migrant workers but also between different migrant groups as they operate on the basis of ‘hiring queues’ (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003: 8). In this ranking, entire national and/or ethnic groups are ordered according to their perceived characteristics. This ordering is done quite arbitrarily, yet it is socially meaningful as stereotypes about ‘hardworking Poles’ attest (Anderson et al., 2006). As most of the research on employer attitudes towards migrants focus on low-wage sectors, the question remains to what extent the strategies of firms differ in relation to higher-skilled migrants. It makes sense to analytically distinguish between labour shortages, where it is the poor conditions of a job that deters local workers, and skill shortages, where

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there are insufficient numbers of well-qualified individuals available in the domestic labour market (EGFSN, 2005; Winkelmann, 2002). However, it may not always be as clear-cut as this. Skilled migrants may still be recruited because they appear cheaper than local workers as evidence from the US IT industry suggests (Martin et al., 2006: 67–68). The extent and manner in which employers recruit and deploy migrants is itself shaped by the broader institutional context of labour markets. Writers within political economy have distinguished between liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs). Each type is characterised by mutually reinforcing sets of institutions: CMEs (exemplified by Germany) are characterised by long-term finance, relatively stable employment and strong vocational training institutions; LMEs (such as the UK and the USA) have short-term finance, more liberal employment regulations and ‘fluid labour markets’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001). In the light of less formal vocational training, employers in LMEs tend to have a stronger ‘buy not make’ orientation, and hence are more likely to recruit skilled employees from abroad (Menz, 2009; Wickham and Bruff, 2008). This has been corroborated by analysis of OECD citizenship data, which found that in the UK and Ireland a considerable extent of the ‘service class’, professionals and managers, is foreign-born (Wickham, 2009). Whereas LMEs often provide low entry barriers for new arrivals, CMEs have a stronger tendency of protecting the insiders in light of a broader labour market orientation of privileging a core of skilled, mainly male workers at the expense of outsiders (EspingAndersen, 1999: 150; Kogan, 2007).3 Certainly it was precisely the UK and Ireland, two LMEs, which opened their labour market in 2004 together with Sweden. Whereas Sweden only experienced relatively minor inflows, both the UK and Ireland received large-scale migration from the NMS. In the case of the latter two, their flexible labour markets have been able to incorporate these inflows without leading to major displacement of the native workforce or to levels of labour market segmentation which are found in some Southern European countries (Schierup et al., 2006). There is little doubt that mass migration since 2004 has helped to fill skill and labour shortages in countries such as the UK and Ireland. At the same time, it may have led to ‘path dependence in the employment of migrants’ (Anderson and Ruhs, 2008: 42). Employers may have fewer incentives to invest in training and upskilling of their workforce. Further, an abundant supply of less-skilled labour may slow down the adaptation of labour-saving technologies and reinforce a ‘low-skill equilibrium’ (although the availability of skilled labour may have the

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opposite effect) (Anderson and Ruhs, 2008: 41–42). Thus, migration interacts with other dimensions of national institutional systems, in particular the education and training system, in the production of skills or, for that matter, the lack of it (Devitt, 2010). Another important institutional domain is the industrial relations system. In particular, the role of trade unions is of importance in facilitating the integration of migrants in the workplace. Traditionally, organised labour has an ambiguous relationship with migrant labour that can be situated ‘on a continuum ranging from exclusion to inclusion’ (Kahmann, 2006: 186). More recently, union movements across Europe have begun to realise that the cross-border mobility of people is an inextricable part of the transnationalisation of labour markets. In the context of a more diverse workforce, unions have become more receptive to issues of ethnic discrimination and have adopted policies on anti-discrimination in most countries (Fulton, 2003). Moreover, some unions increasingly make efforts to organise new migrants from the NMS in an attempt to replenish their (shrinking) membership (Fitzgerald and Hardy, 2010; Krings, 2009). Such attempts are likely to increase in the future as the work careers of mobile Europeans increasingly transcend national boundaries. What are the particular features of these transnational work careers? The ‘boundaryless career’: movement across organisations and nations Migrants do not only move across national but also organisational boundaries. Hence, the study of their labour market experience needs to take into account how they move through workplaces. To capture this job mobility, the concept of the ‘boundaryless career’ as developed by Arthur (1994) and Arthur and Rousseau (1996) is a useful analytical tool. Their point of departure is that everyone who works has a career. Whether this experience involves an upward progression or a downward path is not relevant. What defines a career is the sequential and therefore cumulative work experience of the individual over time, not any assumed hierarchy of positions through which there is progression. In this understanding, a cleaner has as much of a career as a consultant. The career is the work biography of the individual. During the period of industrial mass production, ‘career’ was thought of as moving upwards on the occupational ladder in single employment settings; hence the term ‘organizational career’ (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996: 5). To have a ‘career’ in this sense used to be distinguished from just having a ‘job’, which involved little or no upward mobility in firms.

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In both cases, however, employment was assumed to be long-term, so that movement occurred largely within the same organisation, while individuals were assumed to remain in the same occupation over their working life. In the context of economic restructuring and the advance of the ‘postindustrial’ society, many careers have become ‘boundaryless’ in that the work experience of a growing number of individuals is no longer confined to a single firm, occupation or, for that matter, the nation state. Whereas the move across organisational boundaries is the most obvious aspect of the ‘boundaryless career’, it includes other elements beyond physical mobility. A particular emphasis is put on building work-related relationships and networks as a way of ‘gaining access to other people’s knowledge and resources’ (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996: 11). What is further is a new dependence on externally recognised skills and qualifications to sustain a career in the ‘knowledge society’, and even the priority of personal over organisational values (Briscoe et al., 2006; Sullivan and Arthur, 2006). New careers, in other words, may involve new orientations and new social relationships. Organisational change should have implications for migrants accessing jobs in the host country. Greater reliance on the external labour market and on externally validated qualifications should open up hierarchies to outsiders, who no longer have to enter at the bottom and queue upwards. In particular LMEs with their ‘flexible matching of skills and qualifications to jobs’ (Rubery, 2010: 94) are likely to provide opportunities for migrants not only in less-skilled jobs, but also in more qualified positions. At the same time, however, the fact that recruitment and promotion in loose network organisations now often depends less on formal qualifications and more on social connections and reputation may effectively put up new obstacles for outsiders if they are excluded from these networks (Wickham et al., 2008). However, so far the concept of the ‘boundaryless career’ is still largely confined to analysis within the parameters of the nation state, in spite of considerable movements not only across organisational but also national boundaries. If the boundaryless career literature has so far largely ignored cross-border mobility, migration studies have so far paid insufficient attention to the importance of organisations in influencing the employment careers of migrants (for some exceptions, see Anderson et al., 2006; Bommes et al., 2004; MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). To bring the two strands of organisation and migration research together, the boundaryless career approach appears to be useful if we think of migration not just as a spatial move but as ‘movement forward

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in time in the personal biographies of the migrants’ (Burrell, 2010: 298, emphasis added). The boundaryless career approach puts a greater emphasis on the autonomy and reflexive agency of individuals. This of course does not mean that the individual now makes his or her way through a world that is free of constraints. Especially migrants often face particular constraints in the labour market that impede their upward occupational mobility (Datta et al., 2007; Williams, 2009b). However, as ‘free movers’, NMS migrants have more opportunities and choices to construct their work careers than previous generations of immigrants who were often dependent upon a work permit and could not easily move between organisations. Arguably, careers are interwoven with the life cycle. The contemporary life cycle, so it is argued, is itself becoming destandardised: the orderly sequence of education, transition to adulthood, employment and career, family formation and subsequent retirement is no longer so straightforward (Anxo et al., 2010). Young people stay in education longer and then often postpone – or cannot access – entry to conventional employment. This is especially the case for those with educational qualifications that do not lead directly to clear careers. In such circumstances, backpacking, the ‘gap year’ abroad and living a bohemian lifestyle in a foreign city may all be ways of prolonging adolescence. While work certainly matters in much of this mobility, if only to earn the means to finance a mobile lifestyle, the search for travel, adventure and new experiences is at least equally important in influencing the move abroad (Conradson and Latham, 2005). To what extent can we observe a form of mobility across Europe that is influenced not only by work considerations but also by lifestyle choices? From labour migration to worklife pathways? Past migration movements in particular during the ‘guest worker’ era post-World War Two were, with some justification, conceptualised as labour migration. Migrants moved abroad to gain better-paid jobs as many Western economies experienced labour shortages. These movements were inextricably linked to the period of Fordist mass production during which ‘the migration variables were more or less certain – the destination, the type of job, the level of pay, the means of transport [ … ]’ (King, 2002: 94). While even during that period of ‘organised labour recruitment’ migration motives were not necessarily confined to search for work (Hunn, 2005), economic motivation was thought to be paramount.

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However, in relation to contemporary cross-border mobility, it is argued that a significant share of these movements cannot be understood solely within the logic of economic rationality. While work and employment certainly remains central to many of these movements, some scholars have identified a growing overlap between economic and non-economic motives (King, 2002; Wallace, 2001). In particular, young people move for a diverse set of reasons, including to study abroad, to develop a career or as part of an extended travel experience (Conradson and Latham, 2005: 288). A greater emphasis on non-economic motives has been linked to the individualisation of society and the advance of ‘post-materialist’ values. As people increasingly see themselves as ‘reflexive’ or ‘self-authoring’ actors, able to some extent to shape or choose their own identities (Giddens, 1991), the move abroad can be part of a ‘project of selfrealisation’ (Kennedy, 2010). Thus, in the search for personal fulfilment and more lifestyle-orientated goals, ‘mobility and migration can also take place for non-materialist reasons’ (Wallace, 2001: 57). In particular, city life offers considerable lifestyle opportunities. It is now well-established that ‘global cities’ like New York and London, and arguably Dublin as well, increasingly act as a magnet not only for global finance and business, but also for increasing numbers of migrants with different skill levels (Boyle, 2006; Sassen, 1991). Among them are high-skilled ‘creative’ professionals who increasingly move to attractive locations (and only subsequently do the jobs) (Florida, 2002). However, a mobile lifestyle also appeals to young, middle-class individuals who are often attracted to cities by ‘quality of life’ issues as much as by economic opportunities (Conradson and Latham, 2005; Verwiebe, 2008). Arguably, a more lifestyle-orientated form of mobility is facilitated by the EU free movement regime. In fact, non-economic reasons such as ‘quality of life’ and ‘family and love’ are now cited by EU-15 movers at least as much as work-related reasons (Recchi, 2008). However, recent Eurobarometer data suggests that there is an ‘East–West’ divide in relation to migration motives. Whereas almost 50 per cent of all respondents in the NMS would consider moving to another country to have a higher household income, this was the case for only just over 20 per cent of respondents in the old EU (European Commission, 2008: 123). For the latter, more lifestyle-orientated issues such as ‘better weather’ or ‘discovering a new environment’ featured more prominently. Thus, at first sight it appears as if ‘potential mobility motivations in the new member states are more related to socio-economic concerns, whereas citizens from the EU-15 also focus on other considerations related to

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quality of life’ (European Commission, 2008: 122). At the same time, this might be too much of a foregone conclusion. For a start, it is hardly surprising that the search for a higher income features more prominently among NMS citizens if the substantial income gap between East and West is considered. Further, the survey only tried to establish ‘potential mobility motivations’ among the general population. Among those Polish citizens who actually moved to countries such as the UK and Ireland, the younger and better educated were overrepresented (Kaczmarczyk, 2010), precisely the subgroup of migrants who often have less straightforwardly economic reasons. We certainly do not wish to deny the economic dimension of contemporary East–West migration. However, it is worth bearing in mind that the motives of migrants are often more multifaceted than common assumptions about ‘labour migration’ allow for. Besides economic considerations, non-economic motives such as the desire to improve language skills or the search for travel and adventure were cited by Polish migrants as well (Burrell, 2010: 298; Pollard et al., 2008: 43). Further, we have to allow for the possibility that migration motives may change over time (Schneider and Holman, 2009). Moreover, even if work-related concerns are paramount, a lot more than economic rationality might be involved. A job might be part of a broader project of self-development (Kennedy, 2010). Even if the main purpose of a job is to earn money, the migration decision allows the purchase of a desired lifestyle. In that regard, even a low-wage job abroad offers the opportunity to live a ‘normal life’, which might not have been available ‘at home’ (Galasińska and Kozłowska, 2009). Thus, it would be too simplistic to view EU-15 as ‘lifestyle migrants’ and NMS migrants as ‘economic migrants’, in spite of some differences in migration reasons and socio-economic class position. After all, much of lifestyle mobility still has a work-related dimension whereas even apparently economic movements turn out to involve a lot more than just market rationality. Hence, it might be analytically more fruitful to think of both groups as mobile Europeans who pursue different worklife pathways. By using the concept of ‘worklife pathways’, we suggest that especially for the younger and more educated of these migrants, the move abroad is not only work-related but also involves lifestyle choices as part of a broader aspiration for self-development. In short, worklife pathways refer to individuals’ professional and personal life journeys. These pathways may differ in the light of diverse motives, education, work experience and networks. However, what characterises the different worklife pathways of European migrants is a new experience of mobility in the enlarged EU.

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Conclusion In this chapter, we outlined the conceptual argument of the book. We argued that contemporary East–West migration is part of a new wave of cross-border mobility in Europe. Unlike previous ‘guest workers’ or clandestine immigrants, mobile Europeans are ‘free movers’ who are no longer bound by a residence or work permit. As they are not only more mobile across countries but also across organisations, their work careers are increasingly ‘boundaryless’ in that employment is no longer confined to a single job, firm or nation state. While work and employment remain important for these movements, this is no longer the classical pattern of labour migration. In the light of new mobility and travel opportunities, the search for employment often goes hand in hand with lifestyle choices. Migrants from the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ EU differ to some extent in relation to migration motives and socio-economic class position. However, what they have in common is the pursuit of flexible worklife pathways in the new European mobility space. How can these pathways be researched? In the next chapter, we outline why we have chosen a QPS to study the worklife pathways of Polish migrants in the Irish labour market. Notes 1 Settlement rates appeared to have been higher in France and especially in the UK which relied to a considerable extent on migration from the former colonies (Castles and Miller, 2009: 102). 2 There is a different situation for nationals from the 2007 accession states, Romania and Bulgaria, who still face restrictions in most EU-15 member states possibly until 2014. 3 This insider–outsider dichotomy is not necessarily a dichotomy between native and migrants as the insiders may also include long-term foreign residents. In Germany, for instance, some migrant groups during the ‘guest worker’ period were relatively well-integrated into the workplace in some sectors such as the automotive industry where relatively strong trade unions and works councils ensured that migrants would receive the prevalent collective agreements (Hinken, 2001).

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Researching migration: a Qualitative Panel Study and workplace studies

In this chapter, we outline the research methodology of our study. The core of the research was a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS) with a group of twenty-two Polish migrants in Ireland. We first discuss the rationale for choosing a QPS to study Polish migrants in the Irish labour market. We argue that such a study represents an innovative methodological tool to examine the worklife pathways of migrants in a dynamic manner and to illuminate the new mobility patterns of East–West migration. We then describe the actual QPS in more detail and reflect upon the significance of time in tracing the careers of individuals and how these intersect with macro-level developments. In the study of migration, it is important not only to focus on the experience of migrants but also to study the other side of the employment relationship. Hence, we also outline the reasons why we carried out forty interviews with employers and managers in those sectors in which the QPS participants were located. Qualitative longitudinal research and the study of migrant careers Longitudinal research and panel studies have acquired a greater importance in recent years. This reflects a greater interest in tracking the situation of individuals over the lifecourse, and is facilitated by easier access to data sets such as the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) or the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Whereas quantitative longitudinal studies are thus a widely recognised methodological tool, qualitative longitudinal research (QLR) is a relatively recent and still emerging methodology (Neale and Flowerdew, 2003: 189). As in a conventional panel study, QLR comprises respondents who are re-interviewed at regular intervals in order to trace change on key issues. However, whereas in the case of quantitative longitudinal studies

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data is usually collected through a questionnaire and is designed in the form of variables, in the case of QLR open-ended qualitative interviews are normally utilised for data collection. QLR tends to pursue an ethnographic approach and has so far largely been conducted within the fields of anthropology, community studies, education and psychology. Its various approaches include continuous research in the same community over time, follow-up studies or return to sites of previous research, repeated interviews with the same people at regular intervals and lifecourse research across generations (Holland et al., 2006: 3–4). Compared to a conventional panel study, the number of respondents in QLR is usually much smaller. However, the advantage of the latter approach is that it enables researchers to map change (or lack of it) at the individual level over time and to contextualise this information in the worklife biographies of individuals (Farrall, 2006). QLR is thus considered capable of accessing ‘the fluid and often highly situation-specific experiences, understandings and perceptions that mediate the ways in which people deal with and respond to social change’, something a conventional panel study is not necessarily able to accomplish (Henwood and Lang, 2003, in Holland et al., 2006: 2). Thus, repeat interviews with the same participants are crucial for this research approach. However, merely returning to research sites does not necessarily constitute QLR. What makes QLR a distinctive research strategy is ‘the deliberate way in which temporality is designed into the research process making change a central focus of analytic attention’ (Thomson et al., 2003: 185). This approach therefore signals a shift from issue-based research towards tracking individual’s experiences over the lifecourse, a greater interest in the concept of career and a focus on biographical methods over time. From a qualitative perspective, the historical biography is as old as human story-telling, but its formal use in sociology is often traced back to the classic Polish Peasant study by William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki [1927] (1995). A more systematic use of a life course approach started with the oral history movement of the 1970s (e.g. Thompson, 1992 [1975]) and developed into a life history approach whereby life stories were recorded in professions such as bakers or fishermen (Thompson et al., 1983). Subsequently, sociologists have increasingly gathered individual biographies, which was connected to a growing interest in the life course and the life cycle as a framework for research. Biographical methods are also increasingly utilised in the field of migration studies, some of it specifically in relation to Polish migrants

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(e.g. Triandafyllidou, 2006; Stenning and Slowik, 2011). As migrants often operate on the basis of a ‘dual frame of reference’ (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003: 40), a biographical approach is particularly useful in illuminating how migrants’ understanding of their current situation is related both to past experiences and future expectations. However, if we aim to uncover the unfolding worklife pathways of migrants over time, biographical interviews with their discrete starting and ending points have their limitations. Here, a repeat interview methodology of what we term a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS) offers a more promising approach to trace the pathways of migrants. This applies in particular to the study of careers. As careers can be understood as ‘work experiences over time’ (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996: 3), a panel study with its repeat interviews is better able to follow the careers of individuals than conventional workplace studies. Arguably, individuals do not just work in workplaces but move through them (Collins and Wickham, 2004). Such a biographical approach enables us to study migrants’ selfunderstandings, ambitions and aspirations as they change (or don’t change). Thus, as the data set expands through an accumulation of multiple interviews, it becomes possible to begin looking at each participant across time and space. What begins to emerge are ‘case profiles (which) not only provide a condensed account of changes in the individual’s circumstances and appearance, but also summarise the ways in which their narratives developed’ (Thomson, 2007: 572). There is a growing body of research on the socio-demographic characteristics and labour market impact of Polish and other NMS migrants in Ireland (Barrett 2010; Barrett et al., 2012; Doyle et al., 2006; Turner, 2010; Turner et al., 2009). This quantitative approach is an indispensable part of migration research and contributes to a better understanding of the occupational attainments of migrants and the labour market. However, it is also important to illuminate the ‘real life’ stories of migrants (Favell et al., 2006: 6). In relation to this, there have been a number of qualitative studies on Polish migrants that yielded important insights on migrant motives, work experiences, transnational practices and use of network resources (Grabowska, 2005; Komito and Bates, 2009; Kropiwiec and King-O’Riain, 2006; Titley and Kerr, 2011). However, as these studies were based on crosssectional interview data, they were not able to capture change over time in the experiences and aspirations of migrants. Here, a QPS offers a more dynamic approach to study the worklife journeys of migrants in a fast-changing labour market.

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A Qualitative Panel Study: tracing the worklife pathways of Polish migrants Our QPS included a group of twenty-two Polish migrants who were repeatedly interviewed over a period of two years. Polish nationals have been chosen as they constitute the largest migrant group in the Irish workforce. While the QPS involved only a relatively small number of respondents and does not claim to be representative of Polish migrants in Ireland, it allowed for detailed accounts of the working lives of these migrants. It thus represents one of the first applications of QLR to the study of migration and mobility. Using six waves of qualitative interviews, we were able to trace their careers and aspirations as they navigated their ways through the Dublin labour market. As the QPS was designed to interview migrants at their new destination should they leave Ireland, it was well-suited to study the new mobility patterns of East–West migration. An additional and rather unexpected benefit of this methodology was that the first interviews were carried out at the peak of the Celtic Tiger boom, whereas later interview waves were carried out in the midst of a recession and rising unemployment. Consequently, we were able to trace migrant responses to these dramatically changed economic circumstances. As our aim was to study the labour market experiences and career trajectories of Polish migrants in both skilled and less-skilled occupations, we selected four employment sectors: construction, hospitality, financial services and IT.1 The former two sectors accounted for 40 per cent of all Polish employment in Ireland in 2006, and Polish migrants were over-represented in less-skilled occupations (Table 2.1). Having said this, in construction the largest share of Polish migrants worked in skilled manual occupations, reflecting the importance of these positions in the sector. In absolute numbers, financial services and IT were less relevant for Polish migrants. However, as we were particularly interested in the experience of skilled migrants, we selected these two sectors as they are dominated by higher-skilled occupations. In the IT sector (‘computer and related activities’), almost half of all Polish migrants worked in higher-skilled professional, managerial and technical positions. In turn, in ‘banking and financial services’, a large share of Polish migrants were employed in skilled non-manual positions, making the sector an interesting example to study a form of ‘middling migration’ (Kennedy, 2010). Our interviewees were chosen through purposive and snowball sampling (Patton, 2002). Initially, we contacted a small number of Polish migrants who were known to the Polish members of the research team.

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12,122

2 2 1 57 12 26 100

Polish

Source: CSO (2010), special tabulation.

Total numbers

Profess. workers Managerial and technical Non-manual Skilled manual Semi-skilled Unskilled Total

Social Class (%)

214,557

3 8 4 61 10 14 100

Total

Construction

8,319

/ 5 7 19 60 9 100

Polish

100,307

1 24 11 19 41 4 100

Total

Hospitality

645

13 35 26 8 17 1 100

Polish

36,561

25 51 14 6 4 / 100

Total

Computer and related activities

490

3 31 59 2 4 1 100

Polish

85,165

9 41 47 1 1 1 100

Total

Banking and financial services

Table 2.1 Social class position of Polish nationals in four employment sectors (in relation to total employment in the sector, 2006 (%))

RESEARCHING MIGRATION

29

Through them we established further contacts to co-nationals working in the four employment sectors. The respondents were selected in a variety of occupations, ranging from general operatives and less-skilled service sector positions to managerial and professional positions. With more than half of our respondents working in skilled and highly skilled occupations in 2008, our sample was skewed towards the better qualified in more skilled positions (Table 2.2). This was for at least two reasons. First, the experience of Polish migrants in higherskilled employment remains under-researched (for an exception, see Cieslik, 2011). Second, as we wanted to study recent Polish–Irish migration in the broader European context, we were especially interested in the experience of the younger and better educated in terms of ‘new mobilities in Europe’. All participants were based in Dublin as we wanted to study migration into an increasingly globalised city which had begun to attract lifestyle migration and perhaps even a ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2002).2 The design of the panel study involved six interview waves with participants over a 24 month time period beginning in spring 2008. The first interview gave an initial snapshot of Polish migrants at work in a variety of occupations in the city. However, because we wanted to examine how individuals’ biographies, understandings and aspirations changed over time, we then re-interviewed them a further five times, whatever their subsequent employment and wherever they were living. As it transpired, while most were still in Ireland, some had returned to Poland or moved on to other countries such as France or even changed continent to North America. Hence, we re-interviewed them at their new destination, either face-to-face or in a few instances because of long distance on the telephone. Interview waves were carried out at approximately four monthly intervals from spring 2008 to spring 2010. In each wave, the interview was based on an interview guide listing the topics to be covered. To trace possible change in the worklife pathways of our respondents, each interview started with a discussion of their current situation, asking whether it had changed from the previous interview. After that, the interview moved on to a specific topic. Wave 1 (W1) covered the respondent’s employment history to date and his or her current work; it was carried out at the height of the boom. Subsequent waves covered the workplace (W2), social relations at work and outside of it (W3), education and career (W4) and communication and travel (W5). Finally, Wave 6 discussed the respondents’ experience of working in Ireland and how they evaluated it in the middle of economic crisis and growing unemployment.

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Gender

Male

Male

Male

Male

Male

Male

Female

Female

Name (pseudonym)

Bogdan

Marek

Wiktor

Oskar

Maciek

Pawel

Dorota

Natalia Construction

Construction

Construction

Construction

Construction

Construction

Construction

Construction

Sector

Architect

Unemployed (prev. Engineer) Estimator

Civil Engineer

Architect

Metal Fixer

Unemployed (prev. Labourer)

Painter

Occupation

27

36

27

32

32

29

28

23

Age

Single

Divorced

Divorced (1 child) Single

Married (1 child) Single

Single

Single

Marital status

3rd level: MSc Architecture MA Construction Management 3rd level: MA Civil Engineering 3rd level: MA Civil Engineering 3rd level: BA Civil Engineering 3rd level: MA Architecture and Spatial Planning

2nd level: Catering Technician 3rd level: BA International Relations 2nd level: Electrician

Education/ qualifications

Table 2.2 Socio-demographic characteristics of Polish interviewees at the time of interview Wave 1 (spring 2008)

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Gender

Male

Female

Female Female Female

Male

Female

Male

Female

Female

Name (pseudonym)

Miroslaw

Iza

Olga Barbara Ewa

Adam

Ula

Filip

Maria

Anita

Finance

Finance

Finance

Finance

Hospitality

Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality

Hospitality

Hospitality

Sector

Bank Cashier

Bank Cashier

Portfolio Manager

Financial Analyst

Duty Manager

Hotel Waitress Catering Assistant Hotel Receptionist

Chef/Floor Supervisor Hotel Waitress

Occupation

24

26

31

26

32

20 22 23

28

26

Age

Single

Single

Single

Single

Single

Single Single Single

Separated

Single

Marital status

(continued )

3rd level: MA Engineering Management 2nd level: Education 2nd level: Education 3rd level: BA Social Studies 3rd level: MA Tourism and Hospitality 3rd level: MA Finances and Banking 3rd level: MA Finance and Banking 3rd level: MA Public Policy 3rd level: MA International Relations

2nd level: Education

Education/ qualifications

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Gender

Male Male

Male

Female

Name (pseudonym)

Karol Rafal

Kamil

Magda

IT

IT

Finance IT

Sector

IT Technical Support

IT Systems Analyst

Financial Advisor IT Analyst

Occupation

Table 2.2 (Continued)

29

27

25 27

Age

Single

Single

Married Single

Marital status

2nd level: Education 3rd level: MA Psychology 3rd level: BA Computer Sciences (ongoing) 2nd level: Education, IT Technician

Education/ qualifications

RESEARCHING MIGRATION

33

Thus, looking back and forward was a continual sub-theme of the interviews, but it was especially important in three of the six waves. W1 reconstructed the biography to date of our respondents and asked them about their expectations of Ireland, W4 focused in particular on ‘careers’ and W6 asked them to evaluate their time in Ireland to date, including a re-evaluation of their initial expectations. Interestingly, in a panel study the observation point from which this looking back and forward occurs is itself moving. By the end of the panel period, what was the present at the start of the study had itself become the past. Indeed, the QPS enabled us not only to compare different accounts of the past, but also possible different accounts of the future. How some of our respondents saw their future in spring 2010 substantially differed from how they saw their future in spring 2008 when the study began. As this was a panel study, information from each successive wave could be contextualised in the respondents’ biographies. Crucially, this allowed us to see how events and decisions were related to each other over time. However, the individual decisions of our respondents also occurred in a societal context which itself was changing quite dramatically as Ireland went from ‘boom to bust’. Consequently, we were able to link the individual work biographies of migrants to the changing context of the Irish labour market. In that way, the panel study became a way of researching the intersection of individual and macro-level social chronologies (Figure 2.1).3 Much to our surprise, we managed to retain all twenty-two panel members to the very end. This is partly explained by the rapport which built up between the panel members and the two Polish interviewers. Through the repeated interviews, the interviewer and interviewee learned more about each other and a relationship developed built on trust. This, however, did have its downside. At times, there was a real risk that the developing trust and mutual knowledge could shift the interview across a borderline into therapy or counselling. While the more open-ended nature of qualitative interview always carries this risk, the repeated interviews made it much more likely. We are satisfied this did not happen, but sometimes the relationship between interviewer and interviewee did have to be carefully monitored and managed. The QPS thus generated a total of 132 distinct interviews which lasted on average for almost an hour. Each interview was carried out in Polish and tape-recorded; it was then transcribed and translated by the interviewers. To analyse the data, we utilised NVivo qualitative software that enables researchers to code, retrieve and analyse large chunks of qualitative interview data. A final advantage of the panel study was that the interviews also gave an insight into the respondent’s immediate social milieu and thus

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Social time

Slump: unemployment

Boom: labour shortage

Macro context: immigration, emigration, employment Wave 1

QPS waves

Biography

Wave 2

Wave 3

Workplaces Workplace relations

Wave 4

Wave 5

Wave 6

Careers

Keeping in Touch

Looking back and looking forward

Individual time

2008

2009

2010

Figure 2.1 The Qualitative Panel Study: social time, individual time

increasingly became a window into the broader migrant population. Any qualitative interview can easily do this, but because our interviews were repeated over two years, a more comprehensive picture of the situation of the Polish migrant population in Ireland emerged. While the QPS formed the core of the study, it is important to also examine the other side of the employment relationship (MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). In many aspects, the demand side is critical in starting migration flows (Piore, 1979). However, when emphasising the demand side, it is crucial to focus on the micro-level of the firm as ‘most international migrants do not find employment in “labour markets” but within organisations that provide employment’ (Bommes, 2004: 144). Hence, we carried out forty interviews with employers and managers in the four sectors in which our migrant respondents were employed. The interviewed businesses included larger and smaller firms as well as recruitment agencies (Appendix 1). In the interviews, we explored their rationales for employing migrant labour, their recruitment strategies and how they deployed the new workforce. We revisited eight of these workplaces at the end of our study in spring 2010 to explore how recruitment and employment practices had changed in the context of the economic downturn. This research has been flanked by twenty interviews with the social partners, Polish organisations and NGOs to gain an actor-centred

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understanding of migration and the institutions of the Irish labour market (Appendix 2). In addition, we analysed micro-data from the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) as well as aggregated data from the European Labour Force Survey to document the sociodemographic characteristics of migrants and the rather unusual labour market situation in Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Conclusion In this chapter, we outlined the methodology of our study. We argued that a QPS offers a promising tool to trace the careers of migrants and to illuminate the new mobility patterns of intra-European migration. As migrants are increasingly mobile not only across countries but also within national labour markets, such a methodology allowed us to trace their careers across organisational and national boundaries. A rather unexpected benefit of the QPS was the dramatically changing economic circumstances in the course of our study as Ireland moved from ‘boom to bust’. As we intended to study both sides of the employment relationship, we further carried out interviews with employers and managers in those sectors in which our migrant respondents were employed. We thus adopted an actor-centred research strategy that examined the choices of both sides at the micro-level. These choices, however, can only be properly understood if the broader socio-economic context is taken into account. Hence, we outline in the next chapter the particular conjuncture that provided the context for Polish mass migration to Ireland: an unprecedented economic boom, a massive demand for labour and an open labour market. Notes 1 Our research began with background studies of migration and employment in the four sectors which are available at: http://www.tcd.ie/immigration/careers/ publications.php 2 To protect the identity of our participants, we have not only given them pseudonyms but have also changed occasionally some specific information in relation to their personal biographies without changing their overall stories. 3 It could be argued that a division into ‘individual’ and ‘social’ is too simplistic. As in structuralist histories, it is of course possible to think of different levels of time (Braudel, 1972), such as the different rhythms of different economic sectors, or the different rhythms of Irish and European level politics. Such complexities, however, would have rapidly become unmanageable, so this project at least operated with a simpler individual/society dichotomy.

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3

From ‘boom to bust’: Polish migrants in the Irish labour market

This chapter locates mass migration from Poland in the broader Irish labour market context at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It shows how an unprecedented economic boom in conjunction with an open labour market policy in 2004 triggered large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere. We first outline how in the later boom years, Ireland had a goldrush labour market in which an apparently infinite demand for labour was met by an apparently infinite supply of labour. We then demonstrate how Ireland’s open and flexible labour market was able to integrate large-scale migrant inflows from the NMS without leading to major displacement of local workers. However, in the context of ‘light’ labour market regulation, incidents of migrant worker underpayment occurred which became an issue of concern in particular for the Irish trade union movement. In negotiations for a new social partnership agreement, unions succeeded with their demands for a stronger re-regulation of labour standards. However, the future of the regulation of labour standards remains somewhat uncertain as social partnership disintegrated in the context of a sharp economic downturn in 2008. The recession and sharply rising unemployment dramatically changed the economic fortunes of the country. Although Polish and other migrants have been hit hard by rising unemployment, the recession has not reversed previous inward migration as Ireland continues to have a substantial migrant population. This, we argue, is unlikely to change in the future as the mass migration that ensued post-2004 is likely to have a lasting impact on the Irish workplace and wider society. The boom years and a goldrush labour market The context of large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere was the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom period. Ireland experienced an extraordinary economic boom in the 1990s and 2000s. In the periodisation of the boom,

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it makes sense to analytically distinguish between two periods that we term the ‘boom’ period (1993–2000) and the ‘bubble’ period (2001– 2007). In the first ‘boom’ period, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) grew at an average rate of 9 per cent per year, the highest growth rate of any OECD country at that time (Grubb et al., 2009: 15). This boom was driven in particular by high-tech manufacturing as the (then) Industrial Development Authority was quite successful in attracting multinational companies and foreign direct investment, especially in the area of electronics and pharmaceuticals (Barry, 2007). Since 2001, GDP growth continued at about 5 per cent per year. This time, however, the main driving force was the construction sector, which not only generated a huge demand for additional labour but which also led to one of the worst property bubbles in recent history (NESC, 2009). Perhaps even more impressive than economic growth was the growth in employment. Whereas in 1992 total employment was about 1.2 million, by 2007 the Irish workforce had risen to over 2 million workers, a phenomenal increase of three-quarters in fifteen years and unparalleled in Europe.1 Within the context of the expansion of the labour force, unemployment, one of the major social problems of the 1980s, began falling: In 1992, there were still almost 16 per cent of the labour force unemployed; by 2000, the unemployment rate had declined to just above 4 per cent. During the boom years, employment grew in all sectors of the economy (except in agriculture and fishing), but particularly in construction and service-related activities such as distribution, business and health. As can be seen from Figure 3.1, in the first half of the boom (1993– 2000), employment growth was quite strong in manufacturing, but it has effectively declined in the sector in the second half (2000–2007). Instead, employment grew particularly strong in the construction sector during the ‘bubble’ years. By 2007, the sector accounted for over 13 per cent of total employment in Ireland; this compared to an EU average of 8 per cent (CSO, 2008a). In the final years of the ‘bubble’ period, Ireland experienced an extraordinary employment boom. Whereas 60,000 new jobs were created in the period 2001–2003, employment grew by a staggering 250,000 jobs between 2004 and 2007. On the demand side, annual job vacancies hugely increased from 85,000 in 2004 to 142,000 in 2007, an increase of almost 70 per cent and the highest number of vacancies ever recorded by FÁS, the Irish Training and Employment Authority (FÁS 2008: 1). This was reflected on the supply side as the Irish labour force hugely expanded by over 300,000 people in the same period, largely accounted for by inward migration from the NMS, and in particular from Poland. Arguably, this was no longer a ‘normal’ labour market but something different.

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NEW MOBILITIES IN EUROPE

225

175

125

75

25

2000–2007

ts s el

Ho t

He a

lth

&

&

so

re s

ta

cia

ur

lw

an

or k

s s es in Bu s

uf

ac

se

tu

rv

rin

ice

l ai Re t

M an

ns

Co

n

io

ct

tru

g

–25

1993–2000

Figure 3.1 Net job growth by sector 1993–2000 and 2000–2007 (in thousands) Source: European Labour Force Survey, EUROSTAT

Here, a comparison with the UK is instructive. Both the UK and Ireland experienced an economic boom at the beginning of the twenty-first century and pursued an open labour market policy in 2004. However, their employment growth was quite different. Whereas employment in the former grew by almost 3 per cent in the period 2004–2007, in the latter it grew by over 13 per cent. The UK had a buoyant labour market – but Ireland had a goldrush labour market. We define a goldrush labour market as one in which an apparently infinite demand for and supply of labour mutually reinforce each other and lead to a sudden explosion of jobs. In such a labour market, potential new arrivals are assured to get a job, whereas among employers the belief grows that there will be ever more people arriving to fill the jobs they create. Normally, one of the defining features of a labour market is that it has territorial boundaries. However, in a goldrush the boundaries of the labour market become more porous. In fact, as informational flows accelerate and physical barriers fall, the notion of a bounded labour market collapses.

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39

Such a goldrush labour market existed in Ireland in the final boom years. Not unlike the settler booms of the nineteenth century (Belich, 2009), the territorial boundaries of the Irish labour market had become more permeable and, in some respects, hardly existed. This was linked to Ireland’s open labour market policy in 2004 and new technologies of mobility. Unlike the ‘guestworker’ migration of the 1960s and 1970s, this was no longer an organised form of labour migration but instead a free flow of people and information. For potential migrants in Poland, Irish job offers were visible on the Internet or communicated through informal social networks (Komito and Bates, 2009). New transport technologies made Dublin easier to reach from Warsaw than Warsaw was from many provincial Polish villages. New arrivals could be fairly certain to gain employment whereas employers could be fairly certain to have access to new labour. In short, the Irish goldrush labour market was characterised by an apparently infinite supply of new jobs and an apparently infinite supply of new labour.2 As the boundaries of the Irish labour market became more permeable, the composition of the workforce changed. In the first part of the boom, the vast majority of new jobs were taken up by Irish nationals. Ireland’s late baby boomers of the 1970s were entering the job market, more women were looking for work and Irish emigrants were returning. Of the 500,000 new jobs that were created between 1993 and 2000, Irish nationals took up almost 450,000 as the employment rate increased from 52 per cent to 65 per cent. However, during the second ‘bubble’ period of the boom, the picture changed. Of the almost 400,000 new jobs that were created between 2001 and 2007, one-third went to Irish nationals, whereas two-thirds went to non-Irish nationals (Figure 3.2). This pattern became even more pronounced after 2004 and Ireland’s open labour market. Since then, around 80 per cent of new jobs were taken up by non-Irish nationals mainly from the NMS. In other words, in the final years of the boom, employment growth was largely driven by large-scale inward migration from Poland and elsewhere. It is therefore no exaggeration to claim that NMS migration significantly contributed to the continuation of the Irish boom during the ‘bubble’ period.3 After 2004, the increase in employment was coming almost entirely from migration. It is true that at that time the unemployment rate was hovering at just above 4 per cent, which is usually regarded as being close to a full employment economy. Hence, the ‘need’ for additional labour seemed self-evident in the light of a fast-rising number of jobs and vacancies in the goldrush labour market. However, it is worth bearing in mind that mass migration occurred at a time when the employment rate in Ireland was ‘only’ 66 per cent and as such below the ‘Lisbon target’ of 70 per cent set by the EU for its member states in 2000.4

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2,500.0

2,000.0

1,500.0

1,000.0

500.0

0.0 1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

Non-Irish nationals

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

Irish nationals

Figure 3.2 Total employment of Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 15 years and over (in thousands) Source: European Labour Force Survey, EUROSTAT

In other words, for Ireland, importing labour has de facto been preferable to mobilising all the potential indigenous workforce. Such a ‘buy’ rather than ‘make’ strategy was perhaps less surprising as liberal market economies are more prone to import labour to compensate for skill and labour shortages (Menz, 2009). Whereas more ambitious active labour market programmes would have required more strategic and long-term planning, the boom years were characterised by instantaneous growth and shorttermism. Hence, opening Ireland’s labour market in 2004 might have appeared as the more sensible option for policy-makers, in particular as a young and qualified workforce was knocking on ‘Europe’s’ door. EU enlargement, an open labour market and mass migration from Poland Mass migration from Poland to Ireland was facilitated by an open labour market in 2004 in conjunction with powerful economic push-and-pull factors. Ireland experienced considerable skill and labour shortages at

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41

the beginning of the twenty-first century in what was then effectively a full-employment economy (EGFSN, 2005). These shortages were connected broadly to a fall in the supply of Irish graduates, who began to abandon careers in occupations such as IT and engineering (Wickham and Bruff, 2008), and a perceived reluctance on the part of the general Irish labour force to undertake particular types of jobs in low-wage sectors such as hospitality and cleaning. As for the push factors, Poland experienced considerable labour market difficulties at that time, including an unemployment rate reaching almost 20 per cent in 2004. Among the young (15–24 years), this figure rose to a staggering 40 per cent (Pollard et al., 2008: 42–43). This was no doubt one contributory factor why this age group had the highest propensity to move abroad following EU enlargement. Besides better employment opportunities, significant wage differentials between the two countries provided a powerful migration incentive: in 2004, the per capita income in Ireland was approximately three times higher than in Poland as measured in purchasing power standards (Cizkowicz et al., 2007: 10). While these economic push-and-pull factors were a necessary condition for the mass migration between Poland and Ireland, they were not a sufficient condition as population movements are often triggered by policy decisions (Massey et al., 1998). Here, the crucial intervening variable was the decision of the Irish government to implement an open labour market policy at the time of EU enlargement in 2004. This open labour market policy has to be seen in the context of a liberal approach towards immigration which shaped Irish government policy since the 1990s (Ruhs, 2005). Whereas Ireland initially was mainly attracting asylum-seekers, at the turn of the millennium the economic dimension of migration acquired a greater importance in the light of growing labour shortages. Since the late 1990s, the number of migrants from outside of the European Economic Area (EEA) who were entering Ireland on work permits hugely increased from nearly 6,000 in 1999 to nearly 50,000 in 2003 (Ruhs, 2005: 1).5 These migrants were primarily from Central and Eastern Europe and Asia and were mainly employed in less-skilled occupations, especially in the service sector. With the Employment Permits Act of 2003, the regulation of migration was fundamentally transformed. On the one hand, the Irish government decided to grant free labour market access to nationals from the eight accession states from Central and Eastern Europe. On the other hand, it adopted a more restrictive policy with regard to new work permits, as the expectation was that after May 2004 most labour shortages would be filled by workers from the enlarged EU (NESC, 2006).

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In the run up to EU enlargement, employer bodies such as the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (IBEC) and the Construction Industry Federation had lobbied the Irish government not to impose transitional restrictions. Although considerations about the Common Travel Area with the UK also played a role, employer concerns about labour shortages were likely to have been a major factor in the decision of the Irish government to implement an open labour market policy which was in line with its previous business-friendly, liberal approach towards immigration (Menz, 2009). Ireland was the only country together with the UK and Sweden that opened its labour market in 2004. However, their migration experience has been quite different. Sweden only received a relatively small number of migrants from the NMS. This has been explained with stronger labour market regulations, in particular the salience of collective agreements, and perhaps more importantly, ‘general jobless growth’ (Tamas and Münz, 2006: 70). In turn, both Ireland and the UK received large-scale migrant inflows from the NMS, much higher than initially expected. To some extent, labour market restrictions in Germany and Austria, the traditional destination countries for CEE migrants, have diverted some migratory flows to the UK and Ireland (Black et al., 2010). However, the main dynamic behind the unfolding of mass migration was a dynamic labour market in the latter two countries. In the first four years since enlargement, around one million NMS nationals arrived in the UK, two-thirds of them from Poland (Pollard et al., 2008). Ireland received an even higher inflow in relation to its population size which was in part due to its faster growing goldrush labour market. Between 2004 and 2009, over 500,000 NMS migrants arrived in the country. With over 300,000 arrivals, Polish migrants accounted by far for the largest nationality group. Unlike the British experience where significant Polish immigration predated EU enlargement (Garapich, 2008), there were no similar migration histories between Ireland and Poland, making the large-scale migration that ensued post-2004 even more remarkable. Besides an open labour market policy, these migration flows were facilitated by new transport opportunities, and in particular low-cost air travel (Burrell, 2011; Dobruszkes, 2009). Flight connections between Poland and Ireland rapidly expanded in the context of 2004 enlargement. By 2007, seven mainly low-cost airlines offered direct flights on thirty-two routes between the two countries (Mac Cormaic, 2007). Flight destinations were not confined to the two capitals, Dublin and Warsaw, but were spread to other regional airports as well.6 Air traffic accounted for the overwhelming travel between the two countries,

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with one estimate putting the number of Poles who travel to Ireland by aircraft as close to 100 per cent (Monaghan, 2007). As can be seen from Figure 3.3, migrant inflows from Poland and other NMS peaked in 2006. More recently, inward migration declined which was linked to the recession that hit Ireland in 2008. Other reasons were likely to include improved labour market conditions in Poland and the fact that the pool of potential emigrants has diminished as many young Poles, the most mobile section of Polish society, have already left the country. However, in spite of a decline in new inflows, there is continuous movement between the two countries. Even after migrants have moved abroad, they frequently travel home or receive visits from friends and relatives at their new place of residence (Dobruszkes, 2009). It is important to stress that the number of NMS migrants actually residing in Ireland is lower than the overall migrant inflows suggest. As discussed in the previous chapter, one of the features of contemporary East–West migration is its more transient nature, including frequent border

140,0o0

120,000

100,000

80,000

60,000

40,000

20,000

0 2004 Latvia

2005

2006 Slovakia

2007 Lithuania

2008

2009 Poland

Figure 3.3 Inflow of NMS nationals to Ireland (four largest groups) (2004–2009) Source: Department for Social Protection, 2010 (inflows as Personal Public Service numbers)

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crossings, short-term mobility and circular migration (Favell, 2008b). Because of the often temporary nature of much of these movements, they are not always captured by official statistics (Tamas and Münz, 2006: 25). With these caveats in mind, the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) provides the most reliable continuous estimate of migrant stocks in Ireland. According to estimates from the QNHS, around 210,000 NMS migrants were living in Ireland at the end of 2007, accounting for 6 per cent of the resident working-age population.7 With 8 per cent, their share of the Irish labour force was even higher, comparing to 4.2 per cent for nationals from the ‘old’ EU (including the UK) and to 4 per cent for nationals from outside of the EU (CSO, 2011b). As for individual nationalities, the 2006 Census recorded 63,000 Polish nationals as living in Ireland, making them the second largest migrant group in the country after UK nationals. Since then, however, Polish migrants were likely to have overtaken the UK as the largest migrant group because of much higher new inflows. Based on further inflow data and other sources, we estimate that the number of Polish migrants living in Ireland was at around 150,000 at the end of 2007. The most recent 2011 Census counted over 120,000 Polish migrants as living in Ireland, which is likely to reflect some outflows since the 2008 recession (see below). The magnitude of recent Polish and other NMS migration to Ireland becomes apparent if we compare the Irish experience to that of other European countries. With a share of almost 6 per cent of the resident population, Ireland had by far the highest share of post-2004 migrants of all ‘old’ EU-15 countries in 2007. In comparison, the two countries with the second highest share, Austria and the UK, each had a share of just above 1 per cent (EU Commission, 2008: 117). How about the socio-demographic characteristics of Polish nationals in Ireland? At the time of the 2006 Irish Census, 64 per cent of Polish migrants were male and 36 per cent female. They were a quite young migrant group with 70 per cent in the 20–34 age group and 60 per cent single. As for their regional distribution, they were relatively evenly spread across the country. In fact, Poles were, besides the British, the only migrant group that had a presence in every city and town in Ireland. Predictably, the greater Dublin region had the highest share of Polish nationals (almost 30 per cent), but also other cities (Cork, Galway, Limerick and Waterford) had a cumulative share of 16 per cent with a further 23 per cent living in towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants (CSO, 2008b: 88). As regards their educational attainments, around 55 per cent of Polish migrants have been educated to upper-secondary level and 27 per cent

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Table 3.1 Educational attainments of Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 15 years and over, 2006 (%) Irish

UK

28 28 21 20 3

35 27 25 7 6

100

100

Third level Upper secondary Lower secondary Primary Not stated Total

EU-13

NMS

Non-EU

58 23 6 4 9

24 55 10 4 7

50 24 9 6 11

100

100

100

8

Source: CSO (2007: 107)

held a third-level qualification. As such they had somewhat higher educational attainments than Lithuanian and Latvian nationals, the second and third largest NMS migrant group, where the proportion with thirdlevel education was 20 per cent and 16 per cent, respectively (CSO, 2008b: 92). More generally, Ireland and the UK were more successful in attracting higher-skilled Polish migrants than traditional destination countries such as Germany (Kaczmarczyk, 2010). Nevertheless, NMS migrants as a group had less formal education than other migrant groups (Table 3.1). In relation to employment, Polish and other NMS migrants had the highest overall employment rate (86 per cent) of all groups in the Irish labour market in 2006, including Irish nationals. This applied to both male (93 per cent) and female (75 per cent) employees (Figure 3.4). This again underlines the point that Polish and other NMS migrants were above all looking for jobs. With regard to the sectoral distribution of employment, NMS migrants were over-represented in four employment sectors, construction, manufacturing, hospitality and retail, which accounted for three quarters of their overall employment. However, there was a clear gender divide: whereas over 50 per cent of male NMS migrants worked in the former two sectors, almost 50 per cent of female NMS migrants worked in the latter two sectors (CSO, 2008b: 91). Whereas other migrant groups and Irish nationals were more likely to be found in higher-skilled professional positions, NMS migrants were over-represented in less-skilled occupations (Table 3.2). Although Table 3.1 shows that NMS migrants were far from being a low-qualified workforce, over 40 per cent of NMS workers were employed in the two lowest occupational groups, suggesting difficulties in the transferability of skills and qualifications as well as possible language barriers

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100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 Irish

UK Total

EU-13 Men

NMS

Non-EU

Women

Figure 3.4 Employment rates of Irish and non-Irish nationals, 15–64 years, 2006 (%) Source: QNHS, micro-data, 2006, second quarter (own analysis)

(Barrett and Duffy, 2008).9 Polish migrants, however, had somewhat higher occupational attainments than other NMS migrants. According to the 2006 Census, 9 per cent of Poles were working as managers and professionals, whereas only 6 per cent of Lithuanians and 4 per cent of Latvians were working in these positions. Conversely, the latter two groups had a higher share of unskilled and agricultural workers (22 per cent in the case of Lithuanians and 24 per cent in the case of Latvians) than Polish workers (14 per cent) (CSO, 2008b: 30, 32, 42). In relation to EU enlargement, there were particular concerns in many ‘old’ member states that labour mobility from the NMS could undermine wages and employment conditions (Donaghy and Teague, 2006). What has been the experience of the Irish labour market? Between the third quarter of 2004 and 2007, employment of Irish nationals has increased in all sectors except in agriculture, manufacturing and hospitality where it declined by 6 per cent, 13 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively. While probably some incidents of displacement have occurred in these sectors (Jennings, 2006), generally the most likely scenario is that Irish people have been replaced and possibly moved into better jobs.

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Table 3.2 Occupational attainments of Irish and non-Irish nationals, 15–64 years, 2006 (%)

Managers Professionals Associate professionals Clerical and secretarial Craft and related Personal & protect. services Sales Plant & machine operatives Other (includes not stated) Total

Irish

UK

16 12 8 13 14 11

17 15 12 10 14 9

9 8

EU-13

NMS

Non-EU

13 18 13 14 6 13

2 3 2 5 25 13

7 11 17 7 7 24

8 8

11 5

7 14

7 6

9

7

7

29

14

100

100

100

100

100

Source: QNHS, micro-data, 2006, second quarter (own analysis)

Such an interpretation is supported by the fact that the overall employment rate of Irish nationals has in fact slightly increased between 2004 and 2007, with unemployment staying constant at just above 4 per cent. Although wage growth may have been moderated in some sectors, the overall evidence suggests that the adverse impact of migration on wages and employment opportunities for local workers has not been significant (Barrett, 2010; Doyle et al., 2006; NESC, 2006).10 By and large, it therefore appears that Ireland’s flexible and booming labour market was able to rapidly integrate large numbers of migrants into the workforce without leading to major displacements or to levels of labour market segmentation which are characteristic of immigration in Southern European countries (Schierup et al., 2006). As pointed out in chapter one, this is linked to the broader institutional context. LMEs often provide low entry barriers for new arrivals in the light of more ‘fluid labour markets’ (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Kogan, 2007). The ‘flip side’ of a flexible labour market, it could be argued, is a weak enforcement of labour standards. While difficult to quantify, noncompliance with aspects of existing employment legislation appeared relatively widespread in some employment sectors in the aftermath of 2004 and Ireland’s open labour market (Flynn, 2006; Hyland, 2005; MRCI, 2006). This became an issue of concern in particular for the Irish trade union movement as we discuss now.

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Mass migration, social partnership and the (re-regulation of labour standards As an LME, Ireland shares with the UK a flexible labour market and a voluntarist tradition of industrial relations (Hall and Soskice, 2001). However, unlike its British neighbour, Ireland has a tradition of social partnership. After 1987, altogether seven tripartite partnership agreements were concluded at the national level. Over time, the remit of these agreements was extended to areas such as employment and social policies (Donaghey and Teague, 2007). This had important implications for the (re-regulation of labour standards in the context of large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere. As trade unions had a say in the socio-economic governance of the country, they pushed the issue of employment rights to the top of the partnership agenda. Unlike some European trade unions during the ‘guest worker’ period, the Irish trade union movement did not oppose the inflow of migrants (Krings, 2007). In fact, the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (ICTU) together with IBEC campaigned for a ‘Yes’ vote in the second referendum on the 2002 Nice Treaty and supported the open labour market policy of the Irish government.11 However, unions, like most other political and social actors in Ireland, did not anticipate the scale of migration that ensued after EU enlargement (Doyle et al., 2006: 22–23). When incidents of underpayment of migrant workers became more frequent, it was initially NGOs such as the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland which highlighted these cases as they mainly occurred in non-unionised workplaces. However, in a few instances these cases involved unionised migrants. Gama Construction, a company contracted to work on major state infrastructure projects, was found to be paying its Turkish building workers wages well below the industry-wide collective agreements. Although many of the Gama workers were enrolled as members of the Services, Industrial, Professional and Technical Union (SIPTU), Ireland’s largest union, it was Joe Higgins’ Socialist Party TD and not unions who brought attention to the underpayment of these workers. This case illustrated well the challenges that migrants posed to unions, but also the shortcomings of the initial union response. The Gama workers were not directly employed by an Irish company but were posted by a foreign subcontractor, a practice that is particularly widespread in the European construction industry (Balch et al., 2004). Direct communication was made difficult by language barriers and the isolated nature of employment on construction sites. However, eventually SIPTU became

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more actively involved through its new organising division by facilitating meetings with its migrant members and intervening on their behalf (Flynn, 2006: 269). If the Gama case raised awareness about the plight of some migrants in Ireland, it was the 2005 Irish Ferries dispute that captured the attention of the Irish trade union movement and the broader public. When over 500 mostly unionised Irish workers were replaced by agency workers from Eastern Europe, the social consequences of an enlarged EU with a significant gap in wages between the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ member states suddenly became apparent. This controversy generated huge reactions among unions and the wider public, culminating in a ‘National Day of Protest’ when around 100,000 people took to the streets in Dublin and other parts of the country (Krings, 2008). Although the protest marches that were organised by the Irish trade union movement had an inclusive outlook (‘Equal rights for all workers’), resentment towards migrants increased among some sections of the Irish public. There was a particular concern about the impact of mass migration on employment conditions (Brennock, 2006). To counter such tendencies and to prevent a segmentation of the workforce along national lines, unions responded with a rights-based approach to ensure that ‘migrant workers have the same rights and protection as Irish workers’ (SIPTU, 2006: 21). For unions, the social partnership structures became the main forum through which to seek a strengthening of the enforcement architecture. Initially, ICTU even refused to engage in any negotiations for a new partnership agreement until they received assurance that issues such as employment rights would be addressed (Flynn, 2006). The employers body IBEC, concerned to have industrial peace and the partnership process continued, eventually agreed to address these issues and adopted a more conciliatory tone: ‘Extension of the Irish Ferries model into the broader economy . . . involving direct replacement of Irish workers by cheaper foreign labour is . . . not something that is desirable or practicable’ (IBEC, 2005, in Krings, 2008: 37). The new 2006 partnership agreement Towards 2016, contained a section on ‘Employment Rights and Compliance’, including stronger protection against collective dismissals to prevent an Irish Ferries scenario ‘on land’. Among other legislative changes that were agreed on was the establishment of a statutory agency for employment rights. Union representatives had argued that the existing compliance system in Ireland was geared towards an empowered worker who would complain about his or her treatment; in the context of mass migration, this was no longer sufficient as migrants were often not aware of their employment rights;

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hence, it was the responsibility of government agencies to enforce these rights (interview, ICTU, 2010). Towards 2016 certainly represented a major shift towards the re-regulation of employment standards. In particular, the National Employment Rights Authority (NERA) which was established in 2007 is quite a unique enforcement body. In the UK, where unions have become more marginalised, a similar employment rights agency is absent (Fitzgerald, 2006: 9). Since it became operational, NERA has found relatively high rates of non-compliance with parts of employment legislation in some sectors. In particular in the hospitality sector, levels of non-compliance were endemic. For instance, in 2008 NERA found breaches of employment legislation in 85 per cent of contract cleaning businesses, 78 per cent of hotels, 73 per cent of catering businesses and 62 per cent of construction firms that were inspected. Most breaches were in the area of working time (45 per cent), payment of wages including the national minimum wage (24 per cent) and the category ‘Other’ (57 per cent). Altogether, arrears totalling more than three million Euro were recovered (NERA, 2009: 8). It is certainly not a coincidence that all of these sectors had a high share of foreign nationals, suggesting that migrants might be less aware of their employment rights than local workers. Another interpretation could be that migrants might be more prepared to ‘trade off’ (Anderson et al., 2006) relatively poor working conditions for short-term economic gains. In any case, unions realised that equal pay and working conditions for both indigenous and migrant workers would not be achieved by legislative change alone but also required a more active engagement with migrants. Hence some unions, and in particular SIPTU, put a greater emphasis on organising migrant workers through hiring union organisers from the new migrant communities in Ireland (Krings, 2007). Attempts to organise migrants took place against the background of a decline of union density in Ireland. Whereas in 1994 46 per cent of the Irish workforce were organised in a trade union, this had declined to 35 per cent in 2004 (CSO, 2005: 3). In other words, union decline preceded the arrival of mass migration from Poland and elsewhere. As can be seen from Table 3.3, NMS migrants had the second-lowest union density of all groups in the Irish labour market in 2008. This comparatively low level was likely due to the recent nature of the migration and the fact that Polish and other NMS migrants were over-represented in sectors such as hospitality and retail that have a low level of unionisation. Indeed, in the construction sector where SIPTU was particularly active through its new organisers, NMS migrants had a membership level of 17 per cent that was well above their average union density level of 10 per cent.

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Table 3.3 Net trade union density of Irish and non-Irish nationals in a number of employment sectors, 2008 (%)

Total union density Construction Hotels & restaurants Manufacturing Retail Business services Transport & communication

Irish

UK

EU-13

NMS

Non-EU

39 28 12 37 20 24 52

25 18 3 22 13 18 36

9 7 NA 8 13 3 32

10 17 4 12 11 6 16

22 11 10 21 13 5 17

Source: QNHS, micro-data, 2008, second quarter (own analysis)

This suggests that union presence at the workplace in conjunction with the duration of stay is the crucial variable in accounting for differences in unionisation among migrants (Turner et al., 2008).12 If anything, Irish unions are likely to put a greater emphasis on ‘organizing unionism’ (Heery et al., 2000) in the future as previous channels of influence have effectively closed down. After thirty years, the distinctive Irish system of social partnership effectively collapsed in 2009 in the context of the economic crisis. As public finances rapidly deteriorated, the Irish government unilaterally introduced budget cuts including pay cuts for public servants which was met by fierce opposition from public sector unions and eventually brought an end to the tripartite social partnership process (Doherty, 2011). It remains to be seen to what extent the regulation of labour standards will be affected by this. There are signs already that the wage-setting system, including the Joint Labour Committee (JLC) which regulates the standards for some low-wage sectors that have a high share of migrants, is about to be reformed, after a High Court ruling declared parts of the JLC to be unconstitutional (Wall, 2011). In any case, the influence of the social partners in the area of employment regulation is likely to decline as Ireland has entered the ‘post-partnership’, ‘post-Celtic Tiger’ era.13 Migration, recession and post-Celtic Tiger Ireland In 2008, Ireland was hit by a sharp economic downturn. A dramatic decline in the housing market in conjunction with the global financial crisis fundamentally altered the economic fortunes of the country. Between 2008 and 2010, the Irish economy shrank by around 15 per cent, which

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was, with the exception of Iceland, unparalleled among OECD countries. As much as the Celtic Tiger was first and foremost an ‘employment miracle’ (Teague and Donaghey, 2009: 58), the crisis was above all an employment crisis. Since the onset of the crisis, almost 250,000 jobs have been lost and the unemployment rate, once among the lowest in the EU, has risen to over 14 per cent. In the context of the crisis, migration trends have somewhat reversed. Since 2009, more people were leaving the country than moving into it, with net outflows of 35,000 in 2010 and 2011 (each year up to April) (CSO, 2011a). Emigration is back on the agenda. Whereas initially a majority of emigrants were non-Irish nationals, and in particular NMS migrants, in 2011 for the first time more Irish nationals and especially the young were leaving the island. One likely reason for this was a dramatic increase in youth unemployment that had risen to over 30 per cent. Both Irish and non-Irish nationals have been affected by job losses. However, the latter have experienced a sharper increase in overall unemployment. Between 2008 (Q1) and 2011 (Q1), the unemployment rate of Irish nationals increased from 4.6 per cent to 13.5 per cent. Among nonIrish nationals, it rose from 6.4 per cent to 18 per cent. NMS migrants have been the worst hit with unemployment rising to over 20 per cent (CSO, 2011b). This is mainly due to the fact that NMS migrants were over-represented in the construction sector where most of the job losses occurred. Moreover, they had a large presence in sectors such as manufacturing, retail and hospitality that also incurred substantial job losses (Figure 3.5). As with construction, these sectors have a high share of relatively low-skilled jobs. It is therefore no exaggeration to say that migrants in less-skilled employment have been the worst affected by the crisis, as indeed would be in accordance with historical experience (OECD, 2009). In the light of large-scale job losses, welfare benefits acquired greater importance. Ireland’s social welfare system is essentially based on two pillars, social insurance and social assistance. To qualify for Jobseeker’s Benefit, migrants must be unemployed and have a certain number of Pay Related Social Insurance (PRSI) contributions. Jobseeker’s Benefit will be paid for a maximum of 12 months. Both EU/EEA and non-EEA workers are eligible for Jobseeker’s Benefit. However, in the case of the latter, the entitlement is dependent upon a valid residency stamp. The other main social protection scheme is Jobseeker’s Allowance. This is a means-tested scheme that requires the applicant to be ‘habitually resident’ in Ireland. The Habitual Residence Condition (HRC) was introduced as an additional test for social welfare assistance in 2004 to

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160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20

c. vi pp .s

fin

su

&

.&

re tu

&

in Ad m

Ag

ric

ist

ul

s el Ho t

Non-Irish nationals

er

in sh

an ur ta re s

le sa le ho W

g

ts

l ai re t &

ac uf M an

Co

ns

tru

tu

ct

rin

io

g

n

0

Irish nationals

Figure 3.5 Net job losses of Irish and non-Irish nationals by employment sector (in thousands) (2008, Q1–2011, Q1) Source: CSO (2011), Quarterly National Household Survey

prevent ‘welfare tourism’ from the NMS. To be deemed ‘habitually resident’, applicants must prove that their ‘centre of interest’ is in Ireland. This is assessed by a Social Welfare Officer who takes into account factors such as length and continuity of residence in Ireland, the nature and pattern of employment and the ‘future intentions of (the) applicant as they appear from all the circumstances’ (Department of Social Protection, 2010). Other benefits that fall under the HRC include the Supplementary Welfare Assistance (SWA), Child Benefit and One-Parent Family Benefit. The HRC applies, in principle, to both EU (including Irish return migrants) and non-EU nationals. However, the conditions for the former have been relaxed not least because of pressure from the European Commission which had started infringement proceedings against the Irish government on the grounds that the condition may discriminate against EU nationals. Since 2005, EU/EEA migrants with a work history in Ireland can access certain benefits such as SWA and Family Benefits

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without necessarily having to satisfy the HRC (Hughes et al., 2007: 229– 230). This again underscores the growing impact of European social policy legislation on the national welfare system. As EU citizens, Polish migrants have similar welfare rights as Irish nationals (Kvist, 2004). Against the background of escalating unemployment and an eligibility for welfare benefits, the number of NMS migrants signing on the Live Register has sharply risen (Figure 3.6).14 Between January 2008 and January 2011, the number of NMS migrants signing on the Live Register has increased by over 300 per cent from 10,000 to 43,600. During the same period, the number of Irish nationals signing on has increased by almost 140 per cent, from 155,000 to 364,000. Thus, welfare benefits have cushioned the impact of rising unemployment to some extent. This is likely to have been one contributory factor why the downturn has not reversed the situation of Ireland as a country that is host to a substantial migrant population. Whereas around 210,000 NMS migrants were living in Ireland at the beginning of 2008, this number had declined to 155,000 at the beginning of 2011 (CSO, 2011b). At the same time, new migrant inflows from Poland and elsewhere have noticeably declined (see Figure 3.3). It therefore appears that migrant inflows are more sensitive to an economic downturn than migration outflows. In other words, whereas fewer migrants arrive in times of a crisis, those already in the country do not necessarily leave in greater numbers (Dobson et al., 2009).

50,000

40,000

30,000

20,000

10,000

0 Jan Apr Jul Oct Jan Apr Jul 08 08 08 08 09 09 09 NMS

UK

Oct Jan Apr 09 10 10 Non-EU

Jul Oct 10 10 EU-13

Figure 3.6 Non-Irish nationals on the Live Register (2008–2010)

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While some significant migrant outflows have occurred in the context of the downturn, a majority of migrants remains in Ireland. Besides welfare arrangements, this is for at least two other reasons. It may sound banal, but even in a recession a majority of the workforce remains in employment. Although their employment rate has declined by about 20 per cent, it is worth pointing out that over 60 per cent of all NMS migrants over the age of fifteen were still employed at the beginning of 2011 (CSO, 2011b). Another reason is rather non-economic. In the later stages of the migration process, push-and-pull factors become less important as migrants become more immersed in the host society and build new social networks (Kropiwiec and King-O’Riain, 2006: 34). These networks help to sustain the migration process relatively independently from short-term economic change, including a sudden downturn. There is little doubt that Polish migration exhibits new mobility patterns and, to some extent, is more fluid and transient than previous European immigration. There is, however, equally little doubt that the Polish–Irish migration system that emerged in the aftermath of EU enlargement in 2004 remains in place and continues to ensure frequent border crossings, two-way traffic and a continuous presence of Polish migrants in the Irish labour force. Conclusion In this chapter, we outlined the context of mass migration from Poland to Ireland. We showed how an unprecedented economic boom in conjunction with Ireland’s open labour market policy triggered large-scale migration from the NMS. In particular in the later boom years, the territorial boundaries of Ireland’s goldrush labour market had become permeable, allowing for an apparently infinite supply of new arrivals to meet an apparently endless demand for new labour. Although Polish and other migrants were a relatively well-educated labour force, they were over-represented in less-skilled occupations. Moreover, in the face of ‘light’ labour market regulation, incidents of migrant worker underpayment occurred. While these issues were dealt with in the Towards 2016 partnership agreement, Irish social partnership effectively collapsed in 2009 in the context of an unprecedented economic crisis, leaving the future regulation of labour standards in some doubt. Since the 2008 recession, Ireland experienced a massive unemployment crisis. NMS migrants were the worst-hit group in the Irish labour market. However, in spite of some migrant outflows in recent years,

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Polish and other migrant groups continue to have a substantial presence in the Irish workforce which is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. In this chapter, we drew on labour market and migration statistics to analyse the societal transformations in Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century. How have these developments been experienced at the micro-level? In the following chapters, we present evidence from the six interview waves of the Qualitative Panel Study to document the worklife pathways of a group of Polish migrants in the Dublin labour market. We also draw on interviews with Irish firms to illuminate their recruitment and employment strategies as the country went from ‘boom to bust’. In the next chapter, we examine how migrants initially accessed jobs in the aftermath of EU enlargement when employers were keen to expand their workforces in a fast-growing labour market. Notes 1 If not indicated differently, all labour market statistics in this chapter derive from the annual European Union Labour Force Survey that is available at EUROSTAT: www.http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/portal/page/portal/ employment_unemployment_lfs/data/database 2 Perhaps the only other country in the ‘old’ EU-15 that had a similar goldrush labour market at the turn of the millennium was Spain. Between 1999 and 2007, its employment grew by 30 per cent, which was exceptional in the EU-15 (if we leave out tiny Luxembourg). Interestingly, there were other important parallels. Spain received not only one of the highest migrant inflows of all OECD countries at the beginning of the twenty-first century (OECD, 2008) but also very much relied on a construction boom. Like Ireland, the construction boom turned into a property bubble which eventually burst, with quite dramatic social consequences, in particular a huge rise in unemployment. 3 When presenting migration figures, we use the nationality variable as a criterion for ‘migrant’. As much of the migration to Ireland has been quite recent, ‘nationality’ can be regarded as a reliable indicator for migrant inflows. 4 In comparison, in 2004 the British and the Danish employment rates were 72 per cent and 76 per cent, respectively. 5 The EEA includes, in addition to the EU member states, also Iceland, Norway and Lichtenstein. 6 Ryanair alone has ten direct flights from Ireland (nine from Dublin and one from Shannon) to nine destinations in Poland: Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Katowice, Krakow, Lodz, Poznan, Rzeszow, Szczecin and Wroclaw. 7 Since 2007, nationals from Bulgaria and Romania, the two latest accession states, have been included among NMS nationals in the estimates of the QNHS.

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8 We acknowledge permission for the use of the Central Statistics Office – QNHS Microdata Files © Government of Ireland. 9 Drinkwater et al. (2009) report similar findings on the occupational attainments of NMS migrants in the UK. Although Polish migrants in particular were relatively well-educated, NMS migrants were over-represented in lessskilled occupations. 10 These studies however may suffer from an ‘aggregation bias’ (Kahanec et al., 2010: 30), as data collection is normally carried out at the national level and hence possible differences in the impact of migration on local labour markets and sectors is not taken into account. 11 However, retrospectively, unions complained that they were not consulted on this issue and that the decision was reached at the behest of the business community (Begg, 2007). 12 In fact, Turner et al. (2008: 489) found that long-term migrants (those who had arrived in the country in the 1990s or earlier) had a union density of close to 30 per cent. 13 Employer bodies, of course, might be less concerned than trade unions about the declining influence of the social partners in the area of employment regulation. As pointed out, the re-regulation of labour standards in the aftermath of the Irish Ferries dispute was very much a trade union initiative. Traditionally, employers in LMEs have a stronger preference for a lessregulated labour market (Menz, 2009). 14 The Live Register counts those persons who are recipients of either Jobseeker’s Benefit or Jobseeker’s Allowance. It is not a measurement of unemployment.

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4

Routes into employment: migrant aspirations and employer strategies

In the previous chapter, we documented how Ireland’s labour market resembled a goldrush at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It was characterised by a seemingly endless demand for and supply of new labour. However, this in itself does not tell us much about the initial plans and aspirations of migrants or about the attitudes and strategies of employers. Hence, we examine in this chapter the choices of both sides of the employment relationship in the aftermath of EU enlargement, when Ireland experienced mass migration from Poland and elsewhere. We first examine why Polish migrants moved to Ireland. We show that economic motives, in particular the search for a higher income, were important. However, in many cases the migration decision was more complex than just a response to wage differentials. We then examine how migrants accessed employment by utilising a number of formal and informal recruitment channels. As Ireland’s booming labour market provided considerable opportunities both for skilled and less-skilled jobs, almost all participants of our QPS found employment relatively quickly. On the employer side, we examine how Ireland’s open labour market policy transformed the recruitment strategies of Irish firms: EU enlargement provided management with a readily accessible pool of qualified labour at their own doorstep at a time when labour and skill shortages were particularly acute. As the final section shows, recruitment focused above all on migrants’ presumed good attitude and positive work ethic. Since these were attributes which migrants themselves believed they possessed, Ireland’s goldrush labour market appeared as a ‘win-win’ situation for both sides of the employment relationship. Why did they come? Polish migrants in Ireland post-2004 While it is one of the main contentions of the book that contemporary intra-European migration goes beyond classical patterns of labour

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migration, economic motives were quite influential most noticeably in the early stages of the migration process. In particular, significant wage differentials between the two countries provided a strong migration incentive (Cizkowicz et al., 2007: 10). Hence, not surprisingly, the prospect of a higher income featured prominently in the initial migration decision of some of our research participants: In general we came here for earnings. Not to live here nice and beautifully. (Wiktor, metal fixer, Interview Wave (W) 2) It was a very simple reason: money, better future … in general it was a typical money purpose, to buy the apartment and possibly going back to Poland. (Iza, hotel waitress, W1)

For others, however, the reasons to move to Ireland were more multifaceted than just the search for a higher income (see also Kropiwiec and King-O’Riain, 2006: 29–31). For some, the move to Ireland was part of an attempt to start a career abroad that had proven difficult at home (Kennedy, 2010: 471): I thought that I would work in that office (in Poland) for a few months and then I would find something else. But you know, I got stuck there for a year, and there were no indications that something would get better … And I got an e-mail from my friends from college asking me to come (to Ireland) because there is work for architects. (Natalia, architect, W1)

While work and career concerns were quite important, other non-economic motives mattered too as also observed for the UK (Eade et al., 2006; Pollard et al., 2008). Some cited the English language as an important reason why they moved to Ireland. For others, it was more the spirit of travel and adventure and the desire to escape the dull reality of daily life in Poland: I got really tired of Krakow, I couldn’t cope with it (anymore) … I wanted to see something new. It rather wasn’t about the money, nor that I couldn’t find a job in my profession … If you are young, you have to go somewhere, later on you may not get the same chance. (Pawel, civil engineer, W1, emphasis added)

Thus, while economic considerations were possibly the single-most important migration reason, the decision to move abroad was often more multifaceted than common assumptions about ‘labour migration’ allow for. In fact, economic motives often overlapped with non-economic motives such as lifestyle choices, which is indicative of a broader trend across Europe among young people in particular (King, 2002; Kennedy, 2010).

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Quite often, the migration decision was influenced by personal relations, friends and relatives, pointing to the importance of social networks in sustaining these movements (Kropiwiec and King-O’Riain, 2006). These networks emerged mainly after 2004 as unlike the British experience there was no well-established migration system between Poland and Ireland that predated EU enlargement. However, these networks were more transient than traditional immigrant networks that are often based on strong ethnic ties (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003). While informal social networks certainly provided information about possible starter jobs and access to accommodation, these connections were often rather short-term: I got an email from my friends from college asking me, you know, to come … when I arrived, I was living with them … They helped in terms of borrowing a publication for me with all of the firms in Dublin, so I didn’t have to look for that … But now the girls are going back to Poland in some time so I will have to change the flat. (Natalia, architect, W1)

One reason why these networks were more individualistic and marketbased is the fact that as ‘free movers’, Polish migrants were less dependent upon traditional ethnic associations or the church (Garapich, 2008). In fact, the ability to freely move across national and organisational boundaries was an important aspect why Polish migrants came to Ireland: ‘The job I had in Poland was not that bad, in reality I left for adventure, to see how it was over there. So if I had seen problems coming up in front of me, like work permits, I wouldn’t have left’ (Kamil, IT support, W6, emphasis added). After having arrived in Ireland, what has been the experience of Polish migrants in accessing employment? Looking for a job in a goldrush labour market Almost all of our research participants arrived in Ireland in the aftermath of EU enlargement in 2004. At that time, they entered a highly unusual labour market with a seemingly endless supply of new jobs and demand for labour. Under these circumstances, the job search proved relatively easy, in fact much easier than some participants had anticipated. Sometimes they could even choose from a number of different job offers in what was then effectively an employee-driven labour market: I sent out perhaps 30 CVs and around 20 of them replied immediately, the day after. I went to four interviews and I got all the jobs offered. (Barbara, catering assistant, W2)

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Altogether I sent out four CVs and I was shocked that out of the four that I had sent out, three companies got in touch with me. They were employing whoever they could, and it was all growing so fast, they didn’t have any other option … (than) to employ people from the outside. (Oskar, architect, W1, emphasis added)

When looking for employment, our respondents utilised formal recruitment channels such as websites, online job portals and recruitment agencies as well as more informal ones, in particular social networks. While some had already set up a job in advance either involving a recruitment agency or informal contacts, most found employment after arrival. Recruitment agencies are sometimes associated with the underpayment of migrants and attempts to drive down labour standards (e.g. Fitzgerald, 2007). At the same time, they can provide an important route into employment for migrants. During the boom years, some made skillful use of the placement service of these agencies: I am getting offers from different recruitment agencies practically three to four times a week, you know, about some new job offers … The first thing was that I was sending (emails) to the ones that I was interested in the most.… And then I had the interview organised straight away, within a week. (Maciek, civil engineer, W1)

As our sample was skewed towards the better educated, more than half of our twenty-two participants found employment in skilled and higherskilled positions. In that regard, the Irish labour market was more accessible than labour markets in other countries that are often characterised by a form of vertical segregation which confines migrants to less-skilled jobs (Schierup et al., 2006). At the same time, many of our respondents were recruited for entry-level positions in sectors such as financial services and IT, suggesting that they were in fact more likely to be ‘middling migrants’ rather than a new global elite of highly skilled professionals (Kennedy 2010: 467). While some held a relevant degree in finance or a technical qualification, others were recruited into these jobs without holding any subject-specific qualification. Take the example of ‘Maria’ who after having spent some months working as a shop assistant in Ireland found an office job in financial services. For this, her master’s degree in Public Policy was only of indirect relevance in relation to more generic skills: I wasn’t asked about my experience but about my skills, about my character … there was something like an aptitude test, that was one part of

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an interview, where they checked … how I learned and so on … As far as it concerns knowledge, it [her degree] is not useful at all. (Maria, bank cashier, W1)

Possibly the best career opportunities for migrant professionals were in the buoyant construction sector where the workforce was growing much faster than elsewhere. Those participants who were qualified architects and civil engineers found employment in the sector rather quickly. Many, however, were employed in entry-level positions which suggests difficulties in the transferability of qualifications and a lack of ‘location-specific human capital’ (Barrett et al., 2012). For skilled positions, the recruitment process normally involved a formal job interview at which employers required a recognised qualification and/or relevant work experience. However, our research suggests that during the boom years recruitment was sometimes surprisingly informal even for higher-skilled positions (Moriarty et al., 2012). This was how an architect experienced her job interview: ‘I simply came and it was a laid back conversation about what I would like to do, what I knew, what projects had I been working on … very relaxed atmosphere, you know, some jokes’ (Natalia, architect, W1). The examination of relevant qualifications was not always as rigorous as might have been expected. This civil engineer did not even have to present his formal qualifications at the interview: ‘I could be … a locksmith and work as an engineer in Ireland, nobody would find out, as long as I wouldn’t give any reasons for that’ (Pawel, civil engineer, W1). Thus, during the boom years, normal recruitment procedures and indeed conventional career paths appeared to have been partially suspended in what was not a ‘normal market’: Due to the fact that in the Irish market the construction industry was developing so fast we got our careers … and we made our careers too fast … It is not normal that a thirty year old, for example, is becoming a director in the construction industry, where you (normally) have to learn 40 years to gain that knowledge … I am now in some managerial position. In a normal market … that probably wouldn’t have happened. (Oskar, architect, W1, emphasis added)

Informality in the recruitment process was particularly widespread in relation to less-skilled construction and hospitality positions where employers usually did not pay much attention to qualifications or experience. Some migrants found employment by simply showing up ‘on spec’. For others, a telephone book sufficed: ‘I called the construction companies and I told them what I could do and some told me to

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come.… Altogether I worked for six or seven construction companies in Ireland’ (Marek, construction labourer, W1). As formal recruitment channels were of less relevance for these jobs, migrants often relied upon ‘word of mouth’ and personal contacts, confirming previous research on the importance of migrant networks in finding employment (Anderson et al., 2006; Waldinger and Lichter, 2003): ‘My cousin was here … He was the assistant of an architect on that building site, he knew all the bigger bosses so he asked and he turned me in’ (Bogdan, painter, W1). In fact, these networks can work both ways as employers often rely upon the recommendations of their current employees who effectively become their recruitment agents: And the job I got in the hotel of course through somebody’s recommendation … You know, for them you are being recommended and if somebody is saying: ‘Listen, this is my friend, could you hire her?’ So I went for an interview but it was known beforehand that … I already had this job. (Iza, hotel waitress, W1)

For other migrants, however, it was rather a case of ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter, 1973) in that they received information about jobs from acquaintances rather than close friends or family members: I was working in a coffee shop before where I had a friend … and she told me that her sister had been working there (in the hotel) some time ago. And I was looking for a job, so I was passing through XXX and I dropped my CV. She just told me that it is the hotel in the square. Well, I simply went there and I dropped my CV and on the next day everything started. (Olga, waitress, W1)

Thus, many of these networks were more transient and individualistic than traditional ‘thick’ immigrant networks (see also Csedo˝, 2010). This is likely to be linked to the fact that Polish migrants as EU citizens could freely access the labour market which afforded them considerable opportunities and choices and made them less dependent on close-knit ethnic networks. In contrast, non-EEA migrants such as Brazilians were often more reliant on strong family and friendship ties to access employment and housing in Ireland because of their often precarious immigration status (McGrath and Murray, 2011). In construction, where many Irish workers had moved into skilled or semi-skilled positions, there was a particular demand for labourers. While these jobs were at the bottom of the occupational ladder, wages were still relatively high compared to other sectors such as hospitality (Bobek et al., 2008). Hence some migrants deliberately targeted these positions. What mattered for these labourer jobs was the capacity for

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‘hard work’. Marek, for instance, was quite outspoken about what was his ‘asset’ when approaching employers: When you are looking for a job on a construction site and you don’t know the job … I was straightforward from the very beginning that I am more or less physically strong and that’s my asset. (Marek, construction labourer, W1)

Gomberg-Munoz (2010) documents how Mexican bar workers in the USA internalised and then actively utilised employers’ belief that they were hard-working. What was striking was the extent to which our respondents had internalised similar stereotypes about the ‘hard-working Pole’ (Anderson et al., 2006). This was most visible in relation to lower-skilled hospitality and construction positions: You know, it seems to me it’s easy for us (Poles) to find a job over here. To a considerable extent this comes from the (reputation) that we have, that we’re hard-working. (Olga, hotel waitress, W4)

In fact, employers often shared this view of a ‘superior work ethic’ and ‘good attitude’ of migrants as we discuss below. Whereas in construction employment grew among both Irish and nonIrish workers, although faster among the latter, there was a somewhat different situation in hospitality. Here Irish employment actually declined as many Irish workers moved out of this low-wage sector. As employers were struggling to fill a rapidly growing number of job positions, they appeared to have taken on virtually everyone regardless of qualification or experience: She (the manager) didn’t even know where I had worked, what was my name! I mean, I noticed that they hire everybody there. Well, unless during an interview, I don’t know, somebody punched her in the face … in general they hire everybody. (Olga, waitress, W1)

Whereas those in skilled positions thought of their employment as part of a broader career, those who found employment in less-skilled positions were more inclined to think of their job primarily as a moneyearning purpose. Because they envisaged the job to be only temporary, they sometimes took on employment below their qualifications. Such a ‘trade-off’ has also been observed in other research on the experience of Central and Eastern European migrants in the UK (Anderson et al., 2006). As reported by Iza who holds multiple third-level qualifications: I am struggling with it a lot as I am a very ambitious person and I didn’t graduate from so many courses to work as a waitress, I am aware of

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that … for the moment I have said to myself: ‘take it easy, work in the hotel, earn some money, do what you need to do, and then … we will see what’s going to be next’. (Iza, hotel waitress, W1)

An important question is now whether the initial job represents a stepping stone or whether migrants remain trapped at the bottom of the occupational ladder (Williams, 2009b). As we will show in the following chapters, the evidence on this is mixed in the light of a diversity of labour market experiences. For now, however, we turn to the other side of the employment relationship. What has been the role of Irish firms in the recruitment of migrants? Recruitment in a goldrush labour market: the role of employers To a considerable extent the large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere was demand-driven. However, this in itself does not tell us much about how employers recruited migrants and what they were looking for. When analysing migration movements, it is therefore crucial to focus on the micro-level of the firm (Bommes et al., 2004). Hence, we now examine the recruitment strategies of Irish firms in the aftermath of EU enlargement. Recruitment in simple terms refers to the process by which employers find suitable workers in response to skill and labour shortages. Shortages can in principle be dealt with by employers in two main ways – internal labour market recruitment (make strategy) and external labour market recruitment (buy strategy) (Fellini et al., 2007). Arguably, Irish employers prioritised the buy strategy post-2004 when they were expanding their business and perceived labour shortages to be particularly acute (Moriarty et al., 2012): It was the market of the time. You weren’t getting any Irish, you weren’t getting a lot of Western traditional newcomers applying for these CA (Catering Assistant) positions. (Recruitment Manager, Hospitality) We just couldn’t get people to work, you know, at the time you had full employment … you had people coming for an interview with us one day, and we ring them the next day, and they would say ‘Oh I have a job offer from XXX that offered me a thousand more Euro’. (former Recruitment Manager, Financial Services)

As discussed in chapter three, employer concerns about skill and labour shortages were likely to be a major factor why the Irish government implemented an open labour market policy in 2004 which

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was in line with its traditional liberal, business-friendly approach towards immigration. Pre-enlargement, Irish firms were more likely to recruit additional labour, both skilled and less-skilled, from outside of the EEA on the basis of an employment permit system (Ruhs, 2005). However, many employers regarded this system as too bureaucratic and inflexible. Hence, EU enlargement and Ireland’s open labour market policy provided firms with a congenial opportunity to recruit additional and often qualified labour without having to go through the sometimes cumbersome employment permit system. Whereas in the past some firms, in particular larger ones, went abroad to source additional labour, this was no longer necessary now that a pool of often qualified labour was available quite literally at their own doorstep: With XXX (5* hotel) I have never gone abroad to recruit because obviously in the last 5 years we haven’t need to, we have it over here. Before that, with XXX (another 5* hotel) … we went abroad a lot because the volume of people wasn’t here and we were looking for a significant amount of people. (HR Director 1, Hospitality)

Thus, the changed regulatory environment and the availability of a new workforce transformed the recruitment strategies of Irish firms. Employers made ready use of the new workers in sectors such as hospitality where it was often a case of ‘high quality migrants for “low skilled” jobs’ (Anderson et al., 2006: 69): When the expansion of the EU took place, at that time we were having problems hiring staff … there was an influx from the new accession states and I think that in fairness we made the most of that … We had quality, quality people coming into us, we had guys who were barristers, who were electricians, who were engineers … we could offer them positions which was like preparing food where their English didn’t need to be great. (Area Manager, Hospitality, emphasis added)

In the hospitality sector, the most important recruitment channels were ‘walk-ins’ and migrant networks, although some larger businesses such as hotels and catering companies also made use of job boards, company websites and, for some specialised positions, recruitment agencies. Further, new migrants were sometimes recommended to the employer by other co-nationals who already worked ‘on site’. Inevitably, this led to greater informality in the recruitment process, in particular in smaller businesses such as restaurants and coffee shops: ‘Kitchen porter, we never interviewed a kitchen porter; it’s always their friends come in

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or someone has just arrived’ (Assistant Manager 2, Hospitality). Such reliance on migrant networks has obvious advantages to employers as they save on time and possibly costs. However, on the downside an overreliance on informal referrals can lead to the emergence of ethnic cliques and forms of social closure (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003): We have often found that if we rely totally on referrals, it can cause queues in the restaurants as well, there is cliques, there is groups forming in the restaurant if we hire a lot by referral. (Area Manager, Hospitality)

The rather informal way of recruitment is linked to the fact that many hospitality businesses look less for formal qualifications and work experience but more for ‘good attitude’ and interpersonal skills (as we discuss in the next section). Moreover, in an industry such as hospitality where wage costs are an important part of the overall costs, smaller businesses also cited these as an important factor for recruiting migrants: I can’t imagine a business without some (migrants); having Irish people, I think … would be a lot more expensive, like wages, definitely, a lot more demand by Irish people. (Assistant Manager 2, Hospitality)

As in hospitality, some large construction firms went abroad to source additional labour. However, whereas pre-enlargement they focused on English-speaking countries such as Australia and South Africa to recruit civil engineers, architects and project managers, the changed regulatory environment in 2004 enabled them to target Poland as a potential source country: ‘Poland was a huge area for us … we hooked up with a partner in Poland who was familiar with Western practices so we joined forces with a recruitment agency in Poland and they were doing pre-screening’ (Director 3, recruitment agency, Construction). While employers were adamant that skill shortages were the main motives for sourcing additional labour from abroad, cost considerations also mattered (see also Fellini et al., 2007). As admitted by the same director: ‘Salaries would have been a factor … the Polish guys were much cheaper and would probably work longer hours to get going’ (Director 3, Construction). Whereas some firms went abroad to recruit higher-skilled construction personnel, migrants in Trades and Labour positions were mainly recruited through recruitment agencies and subcontractors (Krings et al., 2011). The increasing usage of subcontracting arrangements is linked to some broader structural changes in the industry during which the production process has become more fragmented. During the last two decades, large firms have transformed into ‘management firms’

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(Veiga 1999, in Schierup et al., 2006: 239) who increasingly outsource individual tasks of the production process to smaller firms. As explained by this HR manager of a large firm that normally acts as the general contractor for building projects: At any one time on a very big project you may find that only perhaps fifteen out of a hundred people working on the job are working for XXX (their company) … We would tend to subcontract all elements of the construction process, from the piling substructure work right through obviously to the painting and carpets and air-conditioning units and so on. The only people that we would employ directly would be the technical staff, the engineering, project management, site management, the quantity surveying. (HR Manager 2)

Consequently, the number of migrants who were directly employed by these ‘management firms’ was rather small and largely confined to higher-skilled occupations. As stated by the same manager: In terms of the extent of non-nationals … it (subcontracting) has minimised our exposure to the recruitment of non-nationals because the vast majority of them are probably working with the companies that we subcontract the elements of the project to. (HR Manager 2)

Whereas recruitment for higher-skilled construction positions usually involved a formal interview, further down the subcontracting chain the recruitment process was more informal, reflecting the above discussed migrant experience in the sector. This is how a representative from a large construction firm described his experience with subcontractors: I asked a few of the subcontractors that would have employed a lot of them (migrants), how did they come about getting, you know, your employees. They said … a fella called into a site and just looking for a job … they won’t be that formal, like they won’t say ‘let’s fill out a form and I interview you for half an hour to see where you worked before’ … it’s not sort of formal contract and all that. (Industrial Relations Manager, Construction)

This division of labour between ‘management firms’ and subcontracted firms and recruitment agencies had implications not only for recruitment but also for labour standards, as we discuss in the next chapter. Whereas in hospitality and construction migrant employment was more widespread in less-skilled occupations, the situation in financial services and software was different in that employers mainly sought to

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fill skilled and highly skilled positions. Having said this, many Polish migrants were recruited for entry-level positions especially in financial services (Salamońska et al., 2008). At around the time of EU enlargement, there was a strong demand to fill junior administration roles in the expanding funds industry where multinational finance companies often sourced migrant labour with the help of recruitment agencies. In relation to retail banking, Irish banks predominantly recruited migrants for positions as cashiers or in customer service that were difficult to fill with Irish candidates who had developed higher aspirations during the boom years: We found that in Dublin Central … it was actually very difficult to employ people directly from school … we didn’t get them directly, and then when they graduated, there was probably a higher expectation that they wouldn’t go into a cash role. If they would join the Bank, they would join the bank on the Graduate programme, and they would go directly into a managerial-type position. (Head of Branches, Financial Services)

In the IT sector, there was especially a demand for higher-skilled software engineering positions in the light of widespread skill shortages (Wickham and Bruff, 2008). This is linked to the fact that many multinational as well as indigenous IT companies have expanded their Research and Development (R&D) activities in Ireland in recent years. As IT professionals were often attracted by multinational companies such as Microsoft, Oracle and Google, smaller Irish-owned companies found it sometimes difficult to recruit from the domestic pool of qualified labour: ‘Because we had very little brand recognition back then, we found it hard to attract Irish candidates to work here … they were all going (to), you know, the blue chip names, Accenture, Microsoft’ (HR Manager 2, IT). Conventional wisdom holds that migrants in IT are mainly recruited because of a shortage of available skills (Kolb et al., 2004). However, our research suggests that for some IT companies, in particular smaller ones, cost considerations were also an important factor: ‘We were always cost-conscious and what we had found was that we could get … experienced accession state people … they would be 10–15 per cent cheaper than their Irish equivalent’ (HR Manager 2, IT). What became apparent was that the changed regulatory environment and the arrival of a new, often qualified workforce impacted upon the recruitment strategies of firms. In the IT sector, there has been shift towards recruiting qualified personnel from within the enlarged EU as applications for employment permits for non-EEA nationals have become more restrictive in the context of the crisis:

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A lot of people come from Poland with Masters degrees, or with a higher educational degree and strong technical experience … There definitely has been a shift from non-EU to EU. So two years ago, you know, we did hire and applied for several Green Cards or working visas. There is hesitancy now because they are harder to get … and also because we are finding more skilled workers in the EU so there is not the need. (HR Manager 3, IT)

EU nationals have not only been recruited for software positions but also for sales and customer service positions. According to this recruitment consultant of a multinational IT company, ‘the bulk of the hire that we do here in Ireland are language skills’. Thus, not all of the migrant recruitment in the sector is for highly qualified IT positions, which also reflects the experience of some of our QPS participants, who were more likely to be employed in mid-level positions. While most migrants in financial services and IT were recruited through company websites and recruitment agencies, some companies recruited directly in Poland: Two or three years ago we went to Poland and we brought in about twenty Polish people. We actually did a campaign in Poland … when we did that I would say everyone of them over the next two years brought in a friend. (Recruitment Manager, Financial Services)

Thus, as in hospitality and construction, firms in financial services and IT utilised migrant networks when recruiting foreign staff. However, whereas employers in the former two sectors used these contacts on a rather informal basis, companies in the latter two sectors normally had an employee referral scheme in place. Further, employers in both sectors made extensive use of recruitment agencies. These agencies normally provide two types of labour, contract labour and placement labour (Anderson et al., 2006: 49–50). Whereas contract labour during which agencies continue to employ the workers was more widespread in construction and hospitality, agencies that specialised in financial services and IT were more likely to place their candidates with companies. Some of the latter agencies expanded their businesses by opening up offices in the NMS in the aftermath of EU enlargement. This has proven to be important in the sourcing of new candidates: We have our five Eastern European offices so we can move candidates from those offices to our Ireland office if we need … we can share our vacancies with those offices … They will go to collect them purely for skill sets and obviously for language, and then interview them there and then

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send them over to us, and have done the pre-screening there. (Recruitment Consultant, IT)

We have so far discussed why and how employers have recruited migrants in the four employment sectors. Whereas in hospitality it was predominantly a shortage of available labour, in construction firms experienced a shortage of both skilled and less-skilled labour. In relation to IT and financial services, it is often assumed that companies recruit migrants to fill higher-skilled positions. While our research found this to be true to some extent for software positions, NMS migrants were also recruited for ‘middling positions’ in IT-related services and especially in finance. The question remains, however, what were employers exactly looking for when they talk about ‘labour shortages’. ‘Good attitude’, ‘cultural fit’ and the quest for a flexible workforce When employers were recruiting migrant labour, they looked for a diverse range of qualifications and skills, depending upon sector and occupation. The concept of ‘skills’ is quite vague and covers everything from educational qualifications and specialised training to soft skills. Broadly speaking, skills can be distinguished between credentialised skills such as formal qualifications and training and more generic soft skills such as ‘good attitude’ and interpersonal skills. The latter competences allude to personality types that have been identified as very important in sectors where social relations with customers, clients or service users are important to the delivery and quality of the work (Anderson and Ruhs, 2008: 14–15). Our research suggests that especially in the hospitality sector where many jobs involve some service interaction with customers, employers often look for ‘personality’ and ‘attitude’ rather than formal qualifications or work experience (Matthew and Ruhs, 2007): We recruit for attitude and we train for skill … everybody in the hotel has the correct attitude … We found ‘ok if you have a qualification that’s good on your CV’ … but if you come in and we knew they couldn’t communicate properly with the guests … then we wouldn’t actually progress that. (former HR Coordinator, Hospitality)

In hospitality employment relations are ‘triadic’, involving employees, employers and customers (Matthew and Ruhs, 2007: 12). Here the right attitude includes service quality, service delivery and the emotional interaction between the producer and the consumer. This may also require a

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certain form of ‘aesthetic labour’, in other words, staff that ‘look good’ and ‘sound right’ to meet the perceived demands of customers (Nickson et al., 2001): It is frontline, it is presentation, it’s personalities … it’s meeting the client, it is meeting the guests, it is very much PR, it is very much customerservice driven so the kind of person that we want to hire are people who are friendly, people who are adaptable, flexible, career-focused as well … Attitude is very important at entry level. We could say that Catering Assistant is not a rocket science job … but a certain personality is needed for that. (Recruitment Manager, Hospitality)

However, there may be tensions between the request for a flexible workforce and retention as NMS migrants may develop new aspirations and move on to more attractive employment. As spelled out by the same manager: ‘What we found is the movement, with a lot of Eastern Europeans, their loyalty is not always there’ (Recruitment Manager, Hospitality). As in hospitality, construction employers did not put much emphasis on formal qualifications when recruiting for lower-skilled positions. Here, ‘the right attitude’ was understood less in terms of service interaction with customers but rather more in terms of physical fitness (Dench et al., 2006: 40). This manager from a recruitment agency was quite blunt about their requirements: (We) vet them for their attitude … CV to us is nothing, it is not important. For the management aspect, CV is everything. For what we do, Trades and Labour, it is all about talking to the guy, looking him in the eye … we sold them to the foreman, ‘Mick, I have got two Polish guys here, they are six feet tall, big strong men’. (Operations Manager, Construction)

The perceived ‘good attitude’ and ‘work ethic’ among migrants was sometimes favourably contrasted with the attitude of Irish workers: The work ethic of a lot of the non-nationals that came in raised the bar … particularly I am thinking at the general operative level … Perhaps some of our Irish workers saw that they had to try a little bit harder so that they were at the same level in terms of productivity. (HR Manager 2, Construction)

A ‘superior work ethic’ of migrants is often associated with a perceived willingness to work hard, follow management instruction and work long hours flexibly. Many migrants travel for work without families and associated social responsibilities and therefore are often available to work long hours or ‘on call’. This flexibility appeals to employers in

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terms of having a workforce available as needed. Further, migrants are less likely to be members of trade unions and therefore perceived as less likely to cause trouble (Rodriguez, 2004). As employers viewed ‘good attitude’ and an imputed readiness for ‘hard work’ to be more prevalent among migrants, it may only be a small step from hiring migrant workers because of vacancies towards preferring migrants, particularly in times of ample supply of additional labour from abroad (Waldinger and Lichter 2003). It certainly appeared as if employers were sometimes utilising migrant labour to push ahead with organisational change as in the case of this upmarket Dublin hotel: With the hotel opening under completely different terms and management … the recruitment process would have been completely different so our workplace is structured in a completely different way to what it was before. Before we closed we had quite a lot of long-service employees who were with the hotel for 20 years, 15 years, and the average age was probably 40–45; and we had 75 per cent Irish. Now it’s opposite, our workers are 25–35 years old, and it is only about 25 per cent Irish. (HR Manager 3, Hospitality)

Thus, whereas employers initially hired migrants because of labour shortages, they subsequently discovered that they may actually prefer them as a more acquiescent and hard-working workforce. Often, however, this is less a preference for migrants as such, but rather a preference for new arrivals who are regarded as more ‘hard-working’ than long-term immigrants or, for that matter, native workers (MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). Thus, in relation to less-skilled construction and hospitality positions, employers privileged the right attitude and work ethic as more important than formal skills and qualifications. There was a somewhat different situation for higher-skilled occupations. Here employers were adamant that they required a formal qualification and, ideally, previous work experience especially for more senior positions. It might be worth recalling, however, that in spite of this insistence some of our migrant respondents in skilled positions perceived the recruitment process still to be quite informal. For professional IT positions, companies were usually looking for a degree in computer science or engineering as software development work has become more sophisticated in recent years (Krings et al., 2008). While statements about the ‘superior work ethic’ of migrants were largely absent in the industry, some employers viewed the professional

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background of migrants more favourably than the qualifications of Irish IT graduates: In Poland the degree length is longer, and in Southern Europe like Spain, throughout the whole course, they work in a company. These guys tend to come in much better prepared and much more experienced, even at graduate level than an Irish equivalent would do because they have a lot more industry experience or a longer course. (HR Manager 2, IT)

For professional construction positions, a qualification in civil engineering, project management or architecture plus relevant work experience was deemed essential. Moreover, a good command of English was regarded as important. This was not only to enable communication with other colleagues in the firm, but also to facilitate communication with other migrant workers on building sites, including foreign subcontractors: There wasn’t enough subcontractors in Ireland doing the work … What was happening was you were having Polish subcontractors coming over and the people didn’t have English … so you needed Polish people on your team to direct those if you really wanted to get the whole benefit. (HR Manager 1, Construction)

As our migrant interviews suggest, there was a certain informality in recruitment, especially in construction where the workforce was rapidly growing. In particular, the examination of recognised qualifications was not always as rigorous as might have been expected. To some extent, this was reflected on the employer side when they recruited migrants without properly checking their qualifications: ‘He is a very good carpenter, although he never did an apprenticeship as a carpenter in Lithuania, we only found that out afterwards … but he is a very good all-rounder’ (Director 1, Construction). This reflects a tradition in liberal market economies where ‘skills’ are less officially certified and more often understood as the ability to carry out particular work tasks (Winch, 2011). In financial services, employers were looking for a third-level degree preferably in a business-related subject, but this was not essential as other degrees were deemed acceptable too. Previous work experience mattered but did not have to be confined to the sector as employers valued transferable interpersonal and other soft skills when recruiting for entry-level positions: ‘Some of the best people I have recruited have worked in supermarkets, they worked in high street shops, worked in cafes and bars … that is all relevant, it’s all customer service really’ (former Recruitment Manager, Financial Services).

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Moreover, in financial services and IT a ‘person-centred’ approach to recruitment (Thompson and Findlay, 1999) was evident, whereby organisations sought to match an applicant with their own organisational ethos (Townsend, 2005). According to this senior HR representative of a multinational investment bank: Cultural fit would be the most important. Are they going to fit with the team … how well do they fit with the team and the business area? How well do they fit with XXX in terms of the way they think about things? How much potential do they have to develop into other areas? We would always look to bring in talent from outside the organisation; otherwise we could move people around internally. (Head of HR3, Financial Services)

In the IT sector, there was no longer just a demand for ‘hard’ engineering skills, but increasingly also for soft skills. In particular, the ability for teamworking was valued: ‘being able to work in a team is becoming more and more important for software engineers … It would probably come down to that, how you think that they would actually fit into the team’ (Director of Engineering, IT). Thus, whereas formal qualifications were important in particular for software positions, it became apparent that employers also looked for soft skills such as ‘cultural fit’, interpersonal and communication skills and ‘creative thinking’ when recruiting for higher-skilled positions. To a considerable extent, they thought that Polish and other NMS migrants ticked most of these boxes. Conclusion In this chapter, we discussed migrant aspirations and employer strategies in the aftermath of EU enlargement. In a highly unusual labour market situation, Polish nationals were attracted to Ireland by the prospect of an endless supply of jobs and a higher income. However, our interviews suggest that non-economic motives such as the desire to travel and to learn the English language were also present. Upon arrival, almost all of our participants found employment with relative ease, utilising a number of formal and informal recruitment channels. As Ireland’s goldrush labour market provided migrants with considerable opportunities, they were not confined to low-paid ‘dead end’ jobs but found employment across the occupational structure, albeit often in entry-level positions. In times of a rapidly expanding labour market, some informality was visible in recruitment, in particular in the fast-growing construction sector where ‘normal’ recruitment patterns appeared to have been partially suspended during the boom years.

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On the employer side, we showed how EU enlargement and an open labour market transformed recruitment. Whereas pre-enlargement firms were more likely to recruit migrants from outside of the EEA, this changed after 2004 and the arrival of an often qualified workforce from Poland and other NMS. Although the requirements and expectations of employers differed according to sector and occupation, they made extensive use of the new workforce when expanding their businesses in the goldrush labour market. Thus, Ireland’s open labour market policy appeared as a ‘win-win’ situation for both sides of the employment relationship. As employers were keen to fill labour shortages in times of rapid job growth, migrants found employment with relative ease. In the next chapter, we examine the actual experiences of Polish migrants in the Irish workplace and how this was influenced by the actions of employers and the broader institutional context of the labour market.

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5

Employment conditions and the culture of work

This chapter addresses the experiences of Polish migrants in the Irish workplace. It explores to what extent their experiences were shaped by sectoral and occupational differences and how migrants interacted with employers and the regulatory environment of the Irish workplace. We show that the work experience of Polish migrants in less-skilled jobs in hospitality and construction was one of informality, non-compliance and casual employment. However, such employment was not necessarily perceived as a disadvantage as some migrants valued a rather informal employment relationship. In spite of incidents of underpayment and non-compliance, and in spite of the higher aspirations of some migrants, work in these supposedly ‘bad jobs’ was not necessarily experienced as such, in particular when comparisons were made to the situation in Poland. This was even more visible in relation to skilled positions where participants reported a rather positive work culture that was seen as less hierarchical and authoritarian than in Poland. What some respondents valued in the Irish workplace was its multinational character; the experience of working in ethnically segmented workplaces was largely confined to the construction sector. Generally, group relations were described as rather good. However, since the onset of the recession, some group tensions became visible in construction that has experienced a dramatic rise in unemployment. While job losses have been more modest in other sectors, working conditions have deteriorated in the context of the crisis. Although migrants have been disproportionally affected by rising unemployment, a return to the status quo ante is unlikely as the Irish workplace has irrevocably changed in the context of mass migration from Poland and elsewhere. Informality and casual employment in less-skilled occupations The flexible Irish labour market provided low entry barriers for new arrivals and was able to integrate large numbers of migrants into the workforce

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without leading to major dislocations in the labour market. At the same time, a flexible labour market can lead to incidents of underpayment and rights violations if it is not accompanied by the enforcement of labour standards (Ruhs, 2006). As discussed in chapter two, the issue of employment law compliance became a major issue for the Irish trade union movement which eventually succeeded with their demands for a stronger enforcement regime in negotiations for a new social partnership agreement in 2006. However, levels of non-compliance with parts of employment legislation remained widespread especially in hospitality (NERA, 2009). This has been corroborated by our research in the sector. For instance, interviewed employers showed little awareness of the fact that catering businesses in Dublin are regulated by an Employment Regulation Order (ERO) which are negotiated by a Joint Labour Committee in the sector. Instead of paying the ERO rates which are normally slightly above the statutory national minimum wage of €8.65, most catering businesses were paying the latter. Further, smaller businesses such as coffee shops and restaurants were often characterised by a rather informal work environment. As the owner of a coffee shop put it: ‘I don’t issue a formal contract, and don’t know what the law is … I haven’t run into trouble on it yet’ (Leaseholder, Hospitality). This informal work atmosphere has been reflected on the migrant side: ‘It is an oral agreement … But as far as I know there is a contract somewhere out there … Well, I don’t know, I had never signed it (laugh)’ (Miroslaw, chef, W1). The absence of a job contract, however, was not necessarily perceived as a disadvantage. Indeed, as we have argued before, the casualised employment relationship can be as attractive for migrant workers as it is for employers (Wickham et al., 2009). As reported by Iza who worked without a written contract as a casual waitress in a Dublin upmarket hotel: There are really flexible hours. It is me who chooses the shifts. I ring them and tell them when I want to work … So that’s what’s keeping me here … I am choosing the shifts and … I am really free in all of that. (Iza, hotel waitress, W1, emphasis added)

It should be borne in mind, however, that this informality gives employers the ability to change conditions at whim. This subsequently became an issue during the later economic downturn. Thus, the hospitality sector is characterised by high levels of informality and non-compliance with employment standards. This is likely to be linked to the growing deunionisation of the sector. Indeed, unions were largely absent in the hospitality workplaces that we researched;

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on the migrant side, unions simply were not mentioned in the interviews. In such a rather deregulated work environment, both employers and migrants appeared to have been relatively unaware of many pieces of employment legislation in the sector. By contrast, we found a relatively broad awareness of the statutory national minimum wage among our migrant respondents. Indeed, they were at times quite assertive about this entitlement which is likely to reflect the fact that as ‘free movers’, they are less dependent on a single employer than migrants from outside of the EEA:1 On pay-day, when everybody was given their money, everybody was getting the money in an envelope as usual. So everybody was there somewhat illegally … And I didn’t get my envelope so I went to the boss … he said, ‘ok, I’ll count it for you’. And he said, ‘so what, eight Euro, isn’t it?’. And I said ‘No’, because I worked there for nine Euro. So then he said, ‘ok, ok’ … well they paid me the minimum (wage), the same I was paid in the previous restaurant. (Olga, waitress, W2)

Thus, the national minimum wage appeared to be an effective threshold in some low-wage sectors such as hospitality that received a huge inflow of migrant workers and where unions no longer possess the organisational strength to prevent a ‘race to the bottom’.2 In contrast to the hospitality sector where the influence of the social partners is rather limited, the construction sector is governed by industrywide collective agreements known as Registered Employment Agreements (REAs) that are negotiated between employer bodies and trade unions. However, there is some evidence to suggest that further down the subcontracting chain the sector is less regulated and non-compliance is more widespread (Krings et al., 2011). Although subcontractors are formally bound by REAs, our interviews suggests that further away from the larger firms the sector is less regulated: ‘They were paying me cash through an envelope … In addition to that I was getting a form that I am a subcontractor for him’ (Bogdan, painter, W1). In the context of such a rather informal environment, migrants were less likely to receive the prevalent rates for the sector: When it comes to wages, these are not great because we don’t even have the minimum (wage) for labourers … in the beginning I was earning really small money … 80 Euros for ten hours. And then it was raised to 120. (Wiktor, metal fixer, W1) [the lowest hourly REA rate was at that time €14.88]

Such incidents appeared to have been relatively widespread in the sector, particularly in the immediate aftermath of EU enlargement and Ireland’s

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open labour market (Flynn, 2006). Indeed, it sometimes appeared as if such cases were part of the ‘bargain of convenience’ between migrants and employers. Having said this, we do not suggest that migrants are generally content with wages below the ‘going rates’. Indeed, our interviews suggest that the longer migrants stay in the country, the more they become aware of their employment rights and try to negotiate better pay and working conditions: ‘In the beginning it was slightly illegal. But after two months of work I asked for my rights and I got a contract, and I got the salary in accordance with the laws’ (Bogdan, painter, W1). As pointed out, a greater insistence upon their employment rights is likely to be assisted by the fact that as EU citizens, Polish migrants have the same labour market rights as Irish nationals and are not dependent upon the renewal of their work permits. A greater awareness of employment rights is also likely to be linked to the role of unions in the sector. Unlike hospitality, unions have a considerable presence in construction. In particular, SIPTU, Ireland’s largest union, has raised the issue of employment rights among the migrant construction workforce through various information campaigns and a number of newly appointed Eastern European organisers (Dundon et al., 2007; Krings, 2007). Sometimes, however, migrants did not go to the unions or make use of the official industrial relations channels when encountering violations of employment rights. Instead, they tried to exercise pressure on the subcontractor by threatening to inform the general contractor about his practices, what we term implicit regulation: We threatened them (the subcontractor) that we will send (the unions) to the main developers, those where they have the jobs from … And the negotiations started. After two weeks everything changed, we have kind of normal wages now … those lowest ones in construction, but it is much better anyway. (Wiktor, metal fixer, W2)

Interestingly, trade unions in the sector deployed similar strategies in response to incidents of underpayment. As unions often lack the power ‘on site’ to enforce REAs, particularly if subcontractors are involved, they instead target the main contractor. As explained by a representative of SIPTU’s Construction Branch: First of all we go to the employer (subcontractor) and say, ‘Look … you are not paying your lads the right one’. If they don’t make themselves compliant, we go to the main contractor and say ‘Listen he is not paying his men

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the right money’. If the main contractor doesn’t put enough pressure on, at that stage … the lads are that p. . . . . off that they go on protest outside and then the media comes down and embarrasses the main contractor. (Construction Branch Organiser, SIPTU)

The large construction firms appeared to be aware that co-operation with non-compliant subcontractors can generate negative publicity and have adverse consequences for their own business: It would be damaging for us to have non-compliant subcontractors … where we are so dependent on the state projects. When you are completing the tender documents for the project, if you had a history of non-compliance, it would damage your prospects. (HR Manager 2, construction)

Hence, the large construction firms insisted that subcontractors have to adhere to the prevalent REAs. However, in spite of such insistence, it appeared that at least to some extent the general contractors insulated themselves from responsibility for employment legislation by making extensive use of subcontracting arrangements. This might also be an attempt to circumvent the industrial relations institutions in the sector: The industry is very much unionised … that’s probably another reason why companies are not as keen to employ (people directly) … There is a tendency then to say ‘well we push that on to a subcontractor, let him deal with the problem’. (Industrial Relations Manager, Construction)

Thus, whereas in hospitality the large number of migrants reinforced a trend towards deunionisation, in construction employers sometimes utilised migrant labour and subcontracting arrangements to circumvent the traditional institutions of collective bargaining in the sector. Hence, the migrant experience in both sectors was rather similar: in an often rather informal work environment, they often encountered noncompliance with employment standards, including lower wage rates. Moreover, training and promotional opportunities in both sectors were rather limited. Do these jobs therefore constitute ‘bad jobs’? Perhaps. However, they were not necessarily experienced as such by migrants. As already discussed, the informal work environment was not necessarily perceived in a negative light as it offered migrants some opportunities and flexibility. It is certainly true that some reported rather harsh working conditions especially in hospitality jobs: Well, I didn’t want to work in the hotel any more, as it was really stressful job and the atmosphere in work was bad, the crew changed all the time,

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people changed all the time and working hours didn’t suit me, because I had to work till very late or work very early. (Olga, waitress, W2)

However, as ‘free movers’, Polish migrants could freely change their employer. Thus, Olga resigned from her position in the hotel and found a new job as a waitress in a Dublin restaurant which was a more pleasant work experience. Although her employment career in Ireland was confined to a number of low-wage hospitality jobs, she was far from unhappy as her work offered her the opportunity to live a ‘normal life’ (Galasińska and Kozłowska, 2009): [I]t’s great to live in Ireland, to have a kind of nice standard of living, and that you can afford everything, even when you do a job with absolutely no responsibilities … When you do for instance a job like a waiting job, I don’t know, you can afford to go out and have a great dinner in a restaurant, you can go for a week’s holiday to Mallorca, or you can sign up for a yoga course. And in Poland you simply can’t afford this, even if you work and slog your guts out. (Olga, waitress, W2)

As previous research found, the Irish workplace is often experienced as less bureaucratic and authoritarian by migrants if they make comparisons to their home country (Boyle, 2006; Turner et al., 2009). While this emerged most clearly in relation to higher-skilled positions, some respondents reported a rather pleasant work culture even in manual construction jobs: ‘It is quite light, stress free, when nobody is standing behind you … I am not a qualified painter so my rate is adequate for me (and) I keep learning all the time’ (Bogdan, painter, W1). Further, Irish construction sites were often seen as more safety-conscious than sites in Poland: ‘On the bigger building sites, when it starts, they require a copy of the Safe Pass and there is an hour long lesson in the canteen about safety on site with a Safety Officer’ (Bogdan, W1).3 While those respondents who worked in less-skilled jobs mostly saw their aspirations not fulfilled in their current job and viewed it as a temporary experience, they did not view the job necessarily in a negative light. Besides earning relatively good money especially in construction, it was also a new experience and had some ‘cool’ aspects to it: In some way you can say that it was a regress because … I was sweeping and running around with a shovel … I felt that I was a simple labourer who came here and is being pushed around sometimes … But it was kind of mixed … In general that job had also very good sides. It is somehow hard to explain, but despite the fact that I worked in construction there was something cool about it, definitely. (Marek, construction labourer, W2, emphasis added)

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Thus, many jobs which might have appeared as ‘bad jobs’, were not necessarily experienced as such. To many, wages and work conditions compared quite favourably to the situation in Poland. This again underscores the importance of placing the work experiences of migrants in a biographical context. A ‘bad job’ in Ireland may, after all, not appear as a ‘bad job’ if it is compared to previous work experience and is seen only as a temporary experience. A positive workplace culture but a ‘wage penalty’ in skilled occupations As already mentioned, the booming Irish labour market provided considerable opportunities for migrants not only in less-skilled jobs but also in more skilled occupations. This was not necessarily something that those of our respondents who found employment in skilled positions had expected. For some, the job was a step forward in their work career and they managed to advance on the occupational ladder. Take the example of Oskar who started his work career in Ireland as a technician and managed to advance into a managerial position in a construction company. Evidently, he was satisfied with the job, especially liking its creative aspects (Florida, 2002): It is fun when you draw something, or design something, or conceptualise something and it gets built. We are doing some quite big things, and it will be there for, let’s say 50 or even 100 years! … And those decisions of ours that we are making in the meantime during the technical consultations.… The designing decisions that in fact need to be made every hour, they are the final ones, nobody will change them. (Oskar, architect, W4)

However, to work on such sophisticated projects was not necessarily representative of the work experience of our participants in skilled positions. In sectors such as IT and financial services, many were recruited for entry and mid-level positions. The work experience of some of them was a far cry from the ‘speciality labour’ (Castells, 2000: 130) that is apparently characteristic of a new class of highly skilled professionals: ‘I receive 200–300 emails a day that have to be answered … it means that I’m ten hours there … sometimes it is irritating’ (Kamil, IT systems analyst, W1). A rather similar work experience emerged in financial services where many Polish migrants were employed in clerical positions (Salamońska et al., 2008): I mean it’s a very repetitive job that starts to be boring after some time. You simply arrive at a stage that you can’t (do it) any more (laughing) … In our

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department there are mainly very young people, who usually don’t know yet what they want to do. And that’s probably why they perceive it (the job) as rather temporary. (Ula, financial analyst, W1)

This notion of a ‘temporary’ job is instructive. As migrants were sometimes overqualified for the position they held, they regarded their job as a ‘stepping stone’ (Williams, 2009b) towards a better position. This, however, could pose a retention problem for employers as acknowledged by this HR representative of an Irish retail bank: Some of them, when they arrived in the branches and just saw … the intensity of working in a branch … you open a door and anything can walk through the door, and it is non-stop then from the minute you open to the minute you close. And it is repetitive … If I was looking at the recruitment situation again, if I was looking for cashiers and customer service, I might not have looked for the same level of qualifications, and I think that I would be more successful at retaining people then. (Head of Branches, Financial Services)

Sectors such as financial services and IT and higher-skilled construction occupations are normally not associated with incidents of underpayment and rights violations. However, our interviews suggest that some migrant professionals experienced a ‘wage penalty’ in that their qualifications and work experience were not sufficiently taken into account: When I worked in the first firm, I already had four years of professional experience, not in Ireland, but still in my profession. And at one stage a graduate came in straight from college, knowing nothing … And I had 25k back then and he had 28k. (Maciek, civil engineer, W1)4

The fact that unions and consequently the traditional institutions of collective bargaining are largely absent in IT and in multinational finance companies was likely to be another contributory factor why payment was sometimes surprisingly low. As this qualified IT technician who worked for a number of IT companies found out: ‘Money? Very little. Well, in XXX (IT company) I started with 19k (per year) and I finished with 23k. And here it is 20,500 (another IT company)’ (Magda, W1). Another issue in IT and financial services was unpaid overtime. This reflects the culture of work in these sectors where ‘parameters of work can extend informally beyond the contractual boundaries of the working day’ (Hyman et al., 2003: 237): In theory I should work 40 or even 38 (hours). De facto I work around ten hours a day … It’s not pushy in a sense: ‘How come, you are already

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heading off?’ or something like that. But it’s natural that I stay longer, because there are a couple of things that have to be done that day. (Kamil, IT systems analyst, W1)

In spite of some rather repetitive job tasks and occasionally relatively low pay, our participants were quite complimentary about the workplace culture they encountered. As migrants often operate on the basis of a ‘dual frame of reference’ (Waldinger and Lichter, 2003: 40), they frequently contrasted their work experience in Ireland quite favourably with their previous employment history in Poland. In particular, the Irish workplace was perceived as less authoritarian and hierarchical: When I came here, and you know, my boss trusted me from the very beginning, he said: ‘listen, you will do this and that’ and really, I am very happy about it. Because he really trusted me and he let me do the project on my own regardless of the fact that I had almost no experience back then. In Poland you still work on the basis that ‘I am your boss and you are my employee and I am better than you and you are worse’. (Natalia, W2)

The view of such a positive workplace culture was quite widespread among our respondents in skilled occupations. This also included management practices which were seen as more efficient: ‘They are managing better, it’s softer on the surface, but in fact it is more effective than … a typical Polish boss who yells’ (Oskar, architect, W6). In such a work environment, the Irish workplace did not only offer career opportunities for migrants but also ‘the freedom to breathe and to become’ (Boyle, 2006: 415). This was particularly visible in skilled positions, but also to a lesser extent in less-skilled jobs. Altogether, the work experience of our respondents appeared to be rather positive, confirming previous research on the experience of Polish migrants in Ireland (Turner et al., 2009). To what extent did this work experience take place in ethnically segmented workplaces? Social relations in a multinational workplace The workplace is an important site for interethnic relations. Often people have more interaction with each other at work than in other social spheres. Indeed, the workplace can be an important site of interethnic communication and integration (Schmidt, 2007). However, work can also be a place of divisions if migrants mainly work alongside fellow co-nationals in ethnically segmented workplaces. Such workplaces sometimes include migrants with no legal status who are channelled through networks into ethnic niches of the labour market (Waldinger

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and Lichter, 2003). What has been the experience of our respondents in that regard? As pointed out in the previous chapter, our respondents found employment across the occupational structure and were not confined to particular segments of the labour market. While networks certainly mattered in the job search, it was often a case of ‘weak ties’ (Granovetter, 1973) in the light of an open labour market with considerable job opportunities for both skilled and less-skilled positions. Hence, the experience of working in ethnically segmented workplaces was largely confined to manual occupations in construction. Many other workplaces were more likely to resemble multinational enterprises, reflecting the large-scale immigration from both EU and non-EU countries that Ireland experienced in the last decade: You can meet people from every part of the world, from India, from Africa, Spain, everywhere, every part of the world. It is not that the majority is Chinese or the majority is Polish, no, but (instead) from every (part of the world) from Egypt, from everywhere. (Iza, hotel waitress, W2) I ended up in a very international team … So I was lucky in this sense … four of them are Irish, the rest is international … there were times when the Irish were in a minority. (Ula, financial analyst, W1)

Broadly speaking, group relations in these workplaces were described as good. Of course, there were occasional tensions and personal conflicts, but these were not experienced along national or ethnic lines. One important reason why workplaces appeared less ethnically segmented is likely to have been the English language. Most of our respondents worked in places where English was the official language and employees were expected to adhere to this: It is a general rule in the hotel … Even in the so-called break we are bound by the requirements to speak English. And I partially understand this. Because while sitting at one table suddenly two Polish girls start to talk to each other in Polish, two Chinese (start talking in Chinese) … They want to keep us kind of all together … they want everybody to be understood, everybody to be listened to. (Iza, hotel waitress, W3)

The fact that most employees in these workplaces had at least a basic command of English is likely to have facilitated interethnic communication. Possibly the only exception to this was the construction sector where interaction among workers of different nationalities were less

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common and Polish migrants often worked alongside co-nationals on building sites. This is likely to be linked to the growing role of foreign subcontractors in the sector who often bring their own workers. Further, as there is little customer interaction in construction, the sector traditionally provides employment opportunities for migrants even if they do not command the language of the host country (Balch et al., 2004). For these reasons, some Polish building workers had to act as translators to facilitate communication on building sites: Usually we talked in Polish … in the company, when there were 25 Polish guys working, I was one of the few who spoke English. In order to communicate with the boss everything that my colleagues were saying I was translating for her. (Bogdan, painter, W1)

Some of our respondents expressed resentment towards Romanian building workers who were perceived as ‘lowering the rates for everyone’. This is likely to have been linked to the different immigration status of the latter. Whereas Polish migrants had free labour market access, Romanian migrants were still facing transitional restrictions. This is likely to have increased the number of Romanians working as either self-employed or altogether irregular, possibly making them more accepting of wages below the ‘going rates’. Management appeared to have been aware of the different situation of these migrant groups: She (manager) told me that I hadn’t have been working good enough lately, not fast enough, and if that would not improve they can replace me with two other Romanians for my price … They (Romanians) all have 300 Euros a week, they are lowering the rates for everyone, they simply work illegally on construction sites. (Bogdan, painter, W1)

As we discuss below, such resentments appeared to have increased in the context of the recession and rising unemployment. Most of our participants had more contact with people from other countries at work than outside of it. Further, there were some workrelated social events, including the proverbial ‘pint after work’, occasional gatherings and rather infrequent company parties that were organised by management. Some Polish migrants were pleasantly surprised that at these gatherings work hierarchies seemingly diminished, possibly reflecting more informal social relationships which apparently are distinctive of the Irish workplace (Boyle, 2006: 417): ‘After work you can go out for drinks with your manager, and chat about common stuff, it also turns out that this is easier. Stress is smaller, there’s less pressure on people’ (Karol, financial adviser, W4).

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However, the notion about the multinational Irish workplace needs to be qualified insofar as nationality was still important in shaping the occupational structure in most workplaces. It is true that the Irish labour market did not exhibit similar levels of ethnic segmentation as found in other countries. It is equally true that the labour market appeared to be more open to migrants in higher-skilled occupations, a common feature of most English-speaking immigration countries (OECD, 2009). However, as pointed out in chapter two, the majority of Polish and other NMS migrants in Ireland were still employed in lower-skilled positions, in spite of relatively high educational attainments. Our research suggests that national hierarchies were still very much in evidence in the workplace. While Irish nationals and indeed migrants from the USA, Australia or the ‘old’ EU-15 were more likely to be employed in supervisory and managerial positions, Polish migrants were more likely to be employed further down the occupational ladder. As described by this HR director of an upmarket Dublin hotel: Eastern Europeans historically have come into more unskilled positions … they have started in a housekeeping or kitchen porter-type role. Now we also have people who have grown into supervisory roles in reception, supervisory roles in food beverage, but they wouldn’t necessarily start there, whereas you find German, French, Italian, Spanish would have a very different level of experience and probably even education … so they would be more likely to go into a semi-skilled type of role than an Eastern European worker. (HR Director 1, Hospitality)

Such a workplace where the majority of Polish migrants held lower occupational positions reflected the experience of some participants not only in construction and hospitality but also in supposedly ‘high-skilled’ sectors such as financial services: In reality … ninety per cent of the positions in finance are some investment funds, administration and so on … All the Polish that I know, they work as such accountants, funds administrators … these aren’t the most fascinating positions, right. That’s why the Irish having the choice prefer to find something else that is more interesting. (Filip, Portfolio Manager, W1)

Reasons for the over-representation of Polish and other NMS migrants in lower-skilled positions are likely to include lower educational attainments compared to other migrant groups, language and difficulties in the transferability of skills and qualifications (Barrett and Duffy, 2008). Moreover, among a few of our respondents there was a perception of discrimination in the workplace that prevented them from progressing towards higher-level positions:

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(There are) only Irish (in supervisory and managerial positions) … I’d say that this is discrimination, a very big one. We had a supervisor from Bulgaria … Everything that had to be done, was done, he was very good with us … it was great to work with him. He asked for full-time and he didn’t get it, he only got part-time. The manager said that there was no possibility to give him full-time. So he didn’t want to work anymore and resigned. And two weeks later she (manager) hired an Irish (candidate) full-time! (Barbara, catering assistant, W2)

It should be said that such complaints about discrimination were rather the exception among our respondents as most perceived the Irish workplace to be rather open with considerable opportunities even for outsiders.5 Thus, many participants worked in multinational workplaces alongside other migrants as well as Irish nationals. This could not conceal the fact, however, that in many workplaces the occupational structure was still to a considerable extent shaped by nationality. Is this evidence of ethnic segmentation? Perhaps to some extent, but the notion of ‘ethnic segmentation’ might be less appropriate to capture the divisions in the Irish labour market. First, the Irish labour market appeared to be quite fluid and Polish and other migrants were not confined to certain segments of the labour market. Second, even in low-skilled positions Polish migrants often worked together with other nationalities: the experience of a workplace where our participants mainly worked alongside fellow co-nationals was largely confined to manual occupations in construction. Moreover, the notion of ‘ethnic segmentation’ appears to be too fixed: what constitutes a ‘migrant job’ and what does not is ultimately socially constructed and hence can change over time (as we further discuss below). Hence, it might be altogether more appropriate to talk about national hierarchies instead of ethnic segmentation to capture the occupational divisions in the Irish workplace. Thus, in most workplaces intergroup relations were experienced rather positively. The question remains, however, to what extent this work experience changed in the context of the recession? From ‘boom to bust’: working conditions in a recession While our study started in the final months of the Celtic Tiger boom, later interview waves were carried out in the midst of a recession and rising unemployment. NMS migrants have been particularly affected by the crisis with an unemployment rate reaching 20 percent (CSO, 2011b). Predictably, in the context of the crisis some of our participants lost their jobs especially in construction that has been the worst affected by the crisis.

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Laying off people, however, is not the only option that employers have to cut down on costs. Other responses may include pay cuts, an increase in unpaid overtime and redeployment of existing staff (Rogers et al., 2009: 7). As a result, work may become more intense: I can feel I am more exploited at work, really … the manager is on quite long leave and … they showed me his work and they promised to give me higher position, which never happened. But I got his duties now, so besides (my work) there are added responsibilities like checking financial reports from the previous day from the whole hotel. (Ewa, hotel receptionist, W4) Basically I should work until five, and when everything is done after five, then we head off … And now basically I work until six, day after day and nobody pays me for that! (Maria, bank cashier, W2)

Whereas previously many migrants were quite upbeat about the positive workplace culture, this has somewhat changed in the context of the recession. This is well-illustrated by the following interview quotes from Miroslaw from different waves. He worked as a chef in a Dublin restaurant: I feel good in this job. The cooperation with people that I work with is excellent. The atmosphere at work is simply great. I feel like I’m at home here … I think that I would be still satisfied working here in a few years’ time. (W1) There is a bit of a different attitude towards work. Everybody is more afraid … a time of waiting that something will happen … They (restaurant owner and manager) are not sure what’s going to happen tomorrow. (W3) Well, the tension (at work) is kind of stronger. You know, people earn less and so on … In fact I am thinking about looking for something else … At the moment this company is a sinking ship. (W6)

Especially in construction, group relations somewhat deteriorated in the crisis. Not only have job losses been more severe, but a certain occupational downgrading among Irish employees has occurred. Whereas Irish building workers largely abandoned low-skilled construction positions during the boom years (Bobek et al., 2008), some of them have now returned to these jobs. In other words, natives and migrants are increasingly in competition for the same jobs. Perhaps less surprisingly, this has raised group tensions in times of rising unemployment:

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You can simply feel when somebody is treating you as a foreigner and you can see that with this crisis now, you still work and, for example, his friends don’t … you can feel that, that he doesn’t tolerate you over here … When there are some tensions or redundancies in the company, then everybody is trying … one nation is trying to get rid of the other … The Irish were only the foremen, nothing apart from that but … I saw that there are (now) three or four working with us, two general operatives and one who screws the plates. (Wiktor, metal fixer, W3)6

In the crisis, the bargaining position of employers has increased, as a growing number of workers compete for fewer jobs. As pointed out by a manager from a recruitment agency that specializes in supplying construction workers to larger companies: There are twenty men looking for every job now, pay scales have gone down. There are crane drivers who now work for us for x amount whereas two years ago they wouldn’t have imagined doing that … they got €250 a day, now if they get €150 a day, they are lucky. (Operations Manager, Construction)

In the context of the recession, employers increasingly look for both functional and numerical flexibility (Atkinson, 1984). In particular, those employees who have shown themselves to be ‘flexible’ in carrying out a number of work tasks are now valued: It’s really a time where people who are flexible … that are able to cover a number of different areas … (who) become much more valuable … People are doing things, they are going back to tasks they might have done, more basic tasks or either that they are doing more … My feeling would be that people have just become a bit more accepting now. (HR Manager 1, Construction)

In all of the workplaces we studied, there has been a sharp decline in new recruitment, perhaps with the exception of IT firms which appeared to have been the least affected by the crisis. Nevertheless, should firms resume recruitment, there was a clear preference for more flexible work arrangements including part-time work and agency labour: If we are bringing in anybody now, we may change that a little bit because we have too many being on full-time contracts … anybody who is brought in right now, is going to be on a part-time contract. It just means that there is more flexibility anyway … anybody brought in now, it is more cost-effective for us now to bring them in as part-time. (Learning Manager, Hospitality)

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As discussed above, sometimes it was a problem for employers to retain migrants, in particular if they were overqualified for their respective jobs and developed new aspirations. However, in a recession the ‘retention problem’ somewhat disappeared: ‘In one way it (the downturn) is good for ourselves, people are staying where they are … What we are seeing now is people are not jumping jobs, people are staying in jobs; there is a nervousness out there’ (Recruitment Manager, Hospitality). Certainly our respondents became more cautious in relation to job change, not only because of the availability of fewer new jobs but also because of declining earning prospects: ‘Changing the job means changing the earnings … when I was calling other companies and enquiring about the earnings, then they were even trying to offer me 9 Euros per hour!’ (Wiktor, metal fixer, W3). Further, there was a perception among some migrants that employers increasingly developed a preference for Irish workers in relation to redundancies and new recruitment: There’s a crisis and unemployment, so the Irish are treated preferably … I can see that with the recruitment of the drivers, with the recruitment of personnel for the bar, for the restaurant … The applications of other nationalities are rejected. (Adam, duty manager, W2)

As migrants have been more affected by the crisis than Irish nationals, it is quite conceivable that some employers play the ‘national card’ in a downturn. However, it is unlikely that faster rising unemployment among migrants is solely due to discrimination. Other factors are likely to include the over-representation of migrants in cyclical industries such as construction and less secure contractual arrangements (OECD, 2009). Certainly from a human resource perspective there is no compelling reason to prefer ‘natives’ in a downturn, not least as sometimes migrants were still seen as the better workers: Some of the migrant workers, obviously they are better than the Irish, their attitude is better … now the market is tighter … when there is a downturn, it is the people who are the hard workers, the more talented people are the ones that you hold on to, whether you are Polish, Irish or South African, that doesn’t matter. (HR Manager 1)

What was a recurrent theme among employers in the hospitality sector was that they noticed an increase of Irish applicants for job positions that during the boom years would have been viewed as ‘migrant jobs’. This again illustrates how the status of a job is socially constituted and hence amenable to change (Castles and Miller, 2009: 222):

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There are people who you wouldn’t have seen 2–3 years ago, who are now applying for jobs … If I put up a job application up online today, well if I did or one of my managers did in one of their restaurants, they would take it down tomorrow and they have 2–300 applicants easy … This restaurant here at O’Connell Bridge could put an application up and you get people from Cavan applying! (Area Manager, Hospitality)

Nevertheless, in spite of a rising number of Irish applicants, most interviewed employers were adamant that migrants will have a continuous presence in the Irish workplace, not least because employers often prefer to retain rather than replace the existing workforce (Doogan, 2009: 206): What happened during the boom was the Irish worker left hospitality because they got better-paid jobs … we’re starting to see them applying to come back into it, and unfortunately it is going to be very difficult for them to do that … Ten years ago if you went into a five star hotel, you always found an Irish bartender, that’s gone. (HR Director 1)

Thus, while some Irish employees have returned to sectors such as hospitality, it appears unlikely that there will be a return to the status quo ante. This is because the Irish workplace has irrevocably changed in the context of large-scale migration from Poland and elsewhere. Conclusion In this chapter, we discussed the experiences of Polish migrants in the Irish workplace. We showed that work in less-skilled occupations in particular was shaped by informal and casual employment. However, this was not necessarily perceived as disadvantageous as some migrants valued a rather informal work environment. In spite of incidents of underpayment and non-compliance, and in spite of higher aspirations of some, work in these supposedly ‘bad jobs’ was not necessarily experienced as such, in particular when comparisons were made to Poland. This was even more visible in relation to skilled occupations where participants reported a rather positive work culture that was seen as less hierarchical and authoritarian. However, some skilled migrants reported that their qualifications were not sufficiently taken into account. An important question in the study of migration is whether the workplace is a site of integration or of national and ethnic divisions. Generally, our research suggests that the migrant experience of working in ethnically segmented workplaces was largely confined to construction; in other sectors, interethnic communication and exchange was

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quite common. Thus, during the boom years our respondents reported a rather positive work experience. However, in the context of the crisis, group tensions increased in particular in the construction sector. Overall, many migrants reported a deterioration of working conditions as the crisis increased the bargaining position of employers who increasingly look for more flexibility from their workforces. To what extent has the recession impacted upon the career trajectories of Polish migrants? In the next chapter, we discuss their work careers as Ireland moved from ‘boom to bust’. Notes 1 Research by the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland found that the single-largest reason why restaurant workers from outside of the EEA did not make a complaint about employment rights violations was concerns about the job and the renewal of the work permit (MRCI, 2008). 2 This is confirmed by workplace inspections of NERA which found a relatively high level of compliance with the national minimum wage across a number of low-wage sectors (NERA, 2009: 8). 3 The Safe Pass aims to ensure that all construction workers in Ireland have a basic knowledge of health and safety standards. It involves a one-day programme that is administered by FÁS. 4 The experience of a ‘wage penalty’ for higher-qualified migrants is confirmed by microeconomic research on the labour market performance of NMS nationals. Barrett et al. (2012) found that the pay gap between Irish and NMS migrants is the largest for the higher-skilled. They explain this with the greater importance of ‘location-specific human capital’ at the upper end of the education/skills distribution. 5 It is quite plausible that there has been an under-reporting of discrimination among our participants which is not unusual for national or ethnic minorities. Hence, it is traditionally difficult to verify the extent of discrimination in the workplace. That such incidents occur, however, can hardly be disputed. McGinnity et al. (2009), for instance, found evidence of discrimination in recruitment practices as non-Irish candidates with similar qualifications as Irish candidates were less likely to be called for a job interview. 6 Whereas pre-crisis, Irish attitudes towards immigrants were comparatively favourable, this has somewhat changed in the context of the downturn. A survey carried out by the Irish Times in 2009 found that over two-thirds of Irish people (72 per cent) want to see a reduction in the number of migrants, with almost 30 per cent preferring most migrants to leave. Strikingly, almost 40 per cent of young people (18–24 years old), who had been more positive towards immigration in previous polls, would like to see most foreign nationals leaving the country. No doubt the fact that this age group has been affected the most by rising unemployment has contributed to this change in attitudes (O’Brien, 2009).

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6

‘Boundaryless careers’: mobility across organisations and nations

Studying careers needs to take greater account of how people move through workplaces. Hence, we focus in this chapter on the career trajectories of Polish migrants as they moved through the Dublin labour market and beyond. While some began to develop rather conventional careers, others took up jobs either not related to their qualifications or for purposes other than traditional understandings of career progression. Some of the latter careers became ‘boundaryless’ in that employment was not confined to a single firm, occupation, sector or indeed nation state. We document first the extent of job mobility across organisations as many participants changed jobs, especially in the early stages of the migration process. We then illustrate the career paths of migrants who not only crossed organisational but also national boundaries. As ‘free movers’, Polish migrants had more agency in constructing their own work careers. However, they did not make their choices free of constraints. One significant factor which inhibited career progression was the 2008 recession. However, there were other obstacles to career progression, including the level of English language competence and lack of network resources, which we identify in the final section of the chapter. What emerged quite strongly from the interviews was the extent to which the work biographies of migrants involved considerably more than just the pursuit of linear career progression. Jobs were sometimes viewed as facilitating a mobile lifestyle or leading towards a ‘project of self-realisation’ (Kennedy, 2010). Ultimately, migrants pursued worklife pathways which were not just work-related but also involved lifestyle choices as part of a broader aspiration for self-development. Careers across organisations Job mobility was particularly pronounced in the early stages of the migration move. To access the Irish labour market, many of our respondents took on ‘starter’ jobs that were below their qualifications

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or disconnected from their previous employment history from Poland. However, as they were entering Ireland as ‘free agent labour migrants’ (Williams, 2006: 595), they were not bound by a work permit and could easily change job (see Appendix 3 for an overview of the job changes of our participants in the course of the study). Many stayed in these starter jobs only for a short time until they found a new job that was more in accordance with their qualification. Subsequently, some began to develop fairly conventional careers until the recession largely put a halt to upward career mobility. Maria, who holds an MA in Public Policy from Poland, started her working career in Ireland as a shop assistant. This was quite below her previous position in Poland where she worked as an assistant manager in a family business. Hence, she was quite adamant that the first job in Ireland was only supposed to be a ‘starter’ job as she was looking for an office job in financial services. This, she thought would offer her career opportunities, not least with a view to eventually returning to Poland: I think all the time to do something here that will enable me to be a specialist when I go back to Poland … I want to be able to go back to Poland and have a nice job there, and not to start from the bottom … I will do something in the banking sector, because there’s lots of things there that I like. (Maria, bank cashier, W1)

When searching for an office job, she found a position as a bank cashier in an investment bank. For this, her degree was of only indirect relevance: As far as it concerns knowledge, it’s not useful at all. Because there are different rules in Ireland and lots of things are different. But I’d say that it’s useful now, as far as it concerns searching, learning, looking for something, that helps a lot. (Maria, W1)

Like other skilled migrants, she took a reduction in her salary in order to access a job that she considered to be more appropriate for her qualifications. However, as she was quite ambitious, she considered her position as bank cashier only a stepping stone as part of a broader career that would ultimately lead her into a managerial position. In order to achieve this, she was quite willing to invest in her own education and skills and undertook professional training to become a qualified financial advisor. In what began to look like a rather traditional career, she was promoted from customer advisor to senior customer advisor. Whereas previously she was ‘one hundred per cent sure’ that she would stay in the banking sector, by Wave 3 Maria’s career path had

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altered considerably. She came to the conclusion that in the light of the recession, there were few promotional opportunities in the sector left. Further, work had become more intense as she had been allocated additional duties which she found quite stressful. Hence, she chose to voluntarily leave the sector and took up a new position as a floor supervisor with a transnational retail company. While she again had to take a wage cut, she was hopeful that the new position would offer her new experiences and lead her towards the desired management position: I’ll learn something new. And if in the bank I had three to five people (to supervise), here it’ll be ten to fifteen … And I cheer up myself and motivate myself, that if I work there for two years, then I’ll have experience in managing people and then I can go even higher up – then maybe the recession will be finally over – and (I’ll) apply to some low managerial (positions). (Maria, floor supervisor retail, W3)

She was still adamant that this job was just another stepping stone in her work career that eventually would take her back to Poland: In five years I would like to be in Poland … and be a manager, that’s for sure. I don’t want to work for someone else anymore. (Maria, W6)

Thus, Maria represents the group of well-educated Poles who were often employed in ‘middling’ positions in sectors such as financial services (Salamońska et al., 2008). Like many of our participants, she had to re-adjust her career plans in the light of the recession which in her case meant not only moving to another organisation but also moving to another sector. Whereas those respondents with more generic degrees such as social sciences were often less certain about their career plans, those with qualifications from the ‘hard sciences’ such as architecture and civil engineering quite deliberately targeted the construction sector. As that sector was growing much faster than any other sector of the Irish economy, there were considerable job opportunities for migrants not only in lessskilled jobs but also in more skilled positions. Here, the work career of Maciek is instructive. Maciek, who is a qualified civil engineer, was one of those professionals who left jobs in Poland to move to Ireland. In his case, he had a secure job as a planner in a city council. However, he felt that the wages were quite bad and he also wanted to ‘catch some new experiences abroad’ (W1). In Ireland, he only worked for construction firms. Although he had some considerable professional experience from Poland, he was initially recruited into a junior engineer position, which in his view was due

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to his lack of knowledge of the Irish market and his level of professional English. However, over the next two years he moved up the career ladder into a more senior position, after having changed firm twice. He quite liked his new, ‘creative’ position (Florida, 2002): I am more and more kind of … independent designer … I lead projects, on my own, by myself … I get the assistants to work for me … I co-ordinate the whole thing, I am kind of a manager at the moment … This is my best job here, in Ireland. (Maciek, civil engineer, W1)

However, in later interview waves he became more frustrated with the job which he experienced as increasingly stressful and tiresome as work had become more intense in the crisis. When he was eventually made redundant, he almost perceived it as a relief: They were trying to screw me with the hours, you know, the overtime … But to be honest with you, they did me a favour. Because at this stage, that job was simply devastating my mental health, at that pace. (Maciek, W5)

After having become unemployed, Maciek was not too keen in immediately finding new employment. Instead, he started to prioritise more lifestyle-orientated goals that he felt he had neglected too much in the past: Finally I started to work on my stuff. Music, first of all, photography, you know, I am catching up with things, that you know, I didn’t have time for before. (Maciek, W5)

During this time, he became involved in playing music gigs in Dublin and was planning to record a demo. This greater emphasis on lifestyle issues was facilitated by access to social welfare benefits in Ireland, which for a while allowed him to live in a manner that he considered comfortable. However, he eventually wanted to return to employment with the help of the Back to Work Enterprise Allowance scheme which supports unemployed people who want to become self-employed. Maciek’s plan for a new business was to utilise his business contacts and networks in Ireland and Poland and to set up a new company that would specialise in the import of building material from Poland: [T]here is a niche (in the market) … and I am way ahead. We already have contacts with companies in Poland, we already have the brochures from some of them. We did a market overview in here, the price comparison is done (and) we would be very competitive. (Maciek, W6)

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Thus, Maciek’s case suggests that there were considerable career opportunities for construction professionals during the boom years in Ireland. However, his worklife pathway also suggests that the stay abroad is not only work-related but also involves lifestyle choices as part of a broader aspiration for self-development. As with Maciek, Karol left a safe and even relatively well-paid job as a manager in customer services in Poland in search of a new life experience in Ireland. He initially just wanted to come over for a year as a ‘tourist’ with his new girlfriend to discover a new country. Whereas Maciek followed a relatively clear career path in his profession, Karol worked in Ireland in a number of different jobs, occupations and sectors. He started his work career as a kitchen porter in a catering company for a few weeks and afterwards worked in a number of different hospitality and retail jobs, none of which were directly related to his previous education or job. Initially, Karol’s main motivation was just to earn some money to finance a mobile lifestyle. However, he and his wife eventually decided to extend their stay in Ireland: [W]hen I left Poland, I left a well-paid and interesting job there, and I knew I wouldn’t come back to it … And while being in Ireland, after a year we thought, well ok, we got some new experience, life experience, but well, if we wanted to go back to Poland, we would go back with nothing, so we decided to stay for another year. And another year turned into one more and one more yet, and now … it will be soon the sixth year. (Karol, financial advisor, W1)

As he wanted to save some money, he took on a job on a building site as a labourer ‘because the money is good’ (W1). After almost two years, he changed employment again and moved into an entry-level position in an Irish retail bank. This was for a number of reasons, including the desire to get a more ‘stable’ job as they were expecting a baby, and also because he thought that a job in financial services might be helpful for a later career in Poland. Moreover, he found the work atmosphere on building sites increasingly unbearable. However, on the downside he had to take a pay cut in his new position in finance compared to the previous construction job. When applying for the position in the bank, he viewed his education (third-level studies in sociology without degree) as largely irrelevant. However, he thought that his previous work experience from Poland mattered as it was very much related to customer service. Whereas he was initially quite hopeful of promotional opportunities, he was more sober about his career prospects in later interviews. Unlike for instance

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in construction where he could have worked in a managerial position, chances to progress appeared more limited in financial services and banking which also reflected the experience of some other respondents in the sector: I work in the sector where, unfortunately, in Ireland you need to stay for years in one place, you need to stay in a place for years to get promoted. And in Poland you do your career much quicker in banking, in Ireland, unfortunately it takes time. (Karol, W4)

He still viewed his work experience from Ireland in a positive light as he regarded it as useful for his future career plans in Poland. However, he was adamant that he did not intend to continue working in a bank as he aspired to become ‘his own boss’: In general I would like to work for myself … I would find my way around in places such as cafés, that kind of thing, not really behind the counter or something, but as an owner. (Karol, W6)

At the end of our study, he and his wife had decided to return to Poland where they aspired to set up their own business. What they had in mind was to open an Internet place with an integrated café. Thus, Karol certainly did not pursue a conventional career path in Ireland. For him, like for many other participants, the work career was interwoven with lifestyle choices and indeed life stage transitions, which meant in his case to abandon a more uncertain job in construction for a ‘safe’ job in financial services at a time when they were expecting a baby. Karol’s career was ‘boundaryless’ in that he moved across sectors and occupations. However, his work biography also suggests that initial job mobility sometimes slowed down after a desired job was secured. Further, their return plans at the end of our study suggest that the work careers of migrants often do not only straddle organisational but also national boundaries. Careers across countries The boundaryless career literature needs to take more account of the considerable movement not only across organisations but also nation states. Certainly the work careers of most of our participants were ‘boundaryless’ in that they already had an employment history from Poland. To illustrate the growing transnational job mobility of migrants, we now reconstruct the worklife pathways of two migrants. They were chosen to demonstrate that the transnational work career

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is not necessarily confined to the high-skilled but may also capture the work experience of migrants at different skill levels. Oskar, who is a qualified architect, exemplifies the transnational career of a high-skilled migrant. Before coming to Ireland, he had already gained relevant work experiences in Poland in an architectural company and on construction sites. He came to Ireland to improve his English and to gain some new work experience. Like many respondents, his first job in Ireland as an operator in a manufacturing firm was below his actual qualifications. However, much to his surprise, he found another job in a construction company relatively quickly. Compared to the previous job, he was on a lower salary which he accepted to work in his profession. In the new business he was initially employed as a technician but quickly moved up the career ladder: [A]fter half a year we started to talk whether or not I would like starting to design something. I started with residential construction, because I was doing that in Poland; then there was an opportunity to move to the commercial area, with a possibility of promotion, and I immediately accepted without really thinking about it. (Oskar, architect, W1)

Altogether, he stayed with this company for five years, being promoted from technician to designer and then to senior designer with a management role. However, the 2008 recession brought a halt to further promotions, and he had to take a pay cut. Like many participants, his initial reaction was to adopt a ‘wait-and-see’ approach and to reassess his options in a dramatically changed labour market. However, he did not have to worry too much as he found a new position with a major Irish construction firm relatively quickly. His new employer sought to enter the Polish market to generate new overseas business in the light of a collapsing construction sector at home; hence, they were looking for Oskar’s language skills and knowledge of the Polish market: [T]here is a disaster on the Irish market and they are trying to do something in Poland. So the fact that I am Polish, that I studied in Poland and that I worked a bit in Poland and that I have been working for these six or seven years in here … I know how the system works here and I can explain to them in their language what has been going on in Poland. To show it to them in better ways than somebody who has never been abroad, even if he/ she was speaking better English than I do. So at the moment I think that I am even in a better situation than some of the Irish people. (Oskar, W4)

At the new firm, he was recruited for a project management position, assessing risk and providing relevant information to the main

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director in relation to construction projects in Poland. Oskar’s work career therefore illustrates how in the context of Polish migration to Ireland new business connections were evolving. In this, migrants often had a pioneering role as ‘brokers or boundary spanners who can bridge different knowledge communities’ (Williams, 2007: 42). As part of this new role, he now travels frequently between Ireland and Poland, which suits his plans to return to Poland in the not too distant future. However, in planning for his return, he encountered some obstacles as the Polish Chamber of Architects was quite reluctant to recognise foreign licences. This is still a practice which is not unknown across Europe, as certain national professions are often difficult to access for outsiders (Favell, 2008a). The case of Oskar suggests that the ‘outsider’ can even be a national citizen if he has gained his work licence abroad. Nevertheless, his transnational work career fits well into the category of free-moving European professionals who are increasingly at ease in crossing national boundaries. Such mobility patterns, however, were not confined to migrant professionals. Indeed, some of our participants in less-skilled positions deployed similar mobility strategies as their peers in more skilled occupations as the following example of Olga suggests. In her own words, she came to Ireland to take a ‘gap year’ after high school, to learn English and ‘get to know let’s say some more interesting cultures’ (W1). She started her work career in Ireland as an au pair but quit the job after a few months as she wanted to find a ‘normal’ job and not to live with a family anymore. After that, she worked in a number of low-wage hospitality jobs in Ireland which she found quite easy to access. The fact that she was not bound by a work permit has inserted a new form of agency in her work career: Now I’m working in a hotel … but I’m going to quit the job next week, because I found a new one (as a waitress) with better opportunities. (Olga, waitress, W1)

Although she frequently complained about ‘doing stupid jobs’ in the hospitality sector, she also saw some good sides to working in a rather informal work environment where less attention was paid to formal labour standards: [T]hey simply paid me in cash. But that suited me, it was because I worked there many hours … and I was not charged any taxes. Well, that suited me at the time, because I cared only about the money. (Olga, W2)

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She nevertheless became more frustrated about her work in Ireland and decided to take a longer holiday to Northern America. As part of this holiday, she worked for a short time in an irregular waitress job as she needed money to finance her stay abroad. This holiday inspired her to actually move to the ‘New World’. However, it needed some time for her visa to be processed. During this time, she moved to the UK where her sister was living and where she continued her work career as a waitress. After she eventually received the visa, she made the move to North America where she again took up a job in a restaurant. By now, she had effectively become a ‘transnational waitress’. When searching for a new job, her work experience from Ireland and the UK proved beneficial: I found a job in a bar … And it was like in all other places, I was walking around with the thing (CV) and I was dropping it around … that’s for sure that I got this job thanks to the fact that I worked in a few places, so there wouldn’t be a huge problem for me to learn all of this. (Olga, W5)

At the end of our study, it looked as if Olga’s mobile lifestyle had come to a halt, at least for the moment, as she settled rather well in North America. She not only found a new boyfriend but was also considering enrolling in a course in Hospitality and Tourism Studies which might take her to a better job in the industry: If I start this course … (I hope) that in five years I will be, I don’t know, an assistant of the manager in a nice five star restaurant, where the people are nice and polite … Or I don’t know, a head receptionist in a hotel. Or a nice, normal job, where you don’t have to work like a dog from dawn till dusk. (Olga, W6)

Thus, Olga’s work career as a ‘transnational waitress’ is an example that the boundaryless career is not necessarily just an experience that is confined to the high-skilled. While she did not progress on the career ladder, the easy access to hospitality jobs offered her the opportunity to pursue a mobile lifestyle. In spite of some rather unpleasant work experiences in various restaurants, she was still positive about her experience as a transnational waitress as this allowed her to earn some money, to learn English and become more self-reliant. Thus, employment in low-wage jobs may not necessarily be a case of labour market entrapment, in particular if it is only a transitional experience (Williams, 2009b). However, some of our respondents identified particular constraints in relation to career progression as we now discuss.

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Obstacles and challenges to the boundaryless career One of the more striking features of the boundaryless career literature is its emphasis on individual agency as the main driver of career development (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996; Zeitz et al., 2009). To some extent, this concurs with our argument that Polish migrants have more opportunities and choices than previous generations of immigrants to construct their own worklife pathways. However, this of course does not mean that migrants make their choices free of any constraints. Indeed, migrants often face particular obstacles, including more limited employment opportunities, language difficulty and possible incidents of discrimination (Williams, 2009b). We now discuss some of these challenges that our respondents encountered in Ireland. One external constraint in terms of career progression was the recession. Whereas pre-recession many of our participants managed to achieve limited promotion, such opportunities largely disappeared in the context of the downturn. Connected to this was a perception among some migrants that since the crisis has hit Ireland, employers had begun to swing back in favour of employing Irish workers and that this was affecting recruitment as well as promotions. Maciek’s sentiment after having been made redundant in his firm represented the feeling of quite a number of our participants: ‘I think that it’s a general policy in Ireland right now (to fire foreigners). It is the same when it comes to hiring now. They hire Irish people in the first place’ (Maciek, civil engineer, W5). However, it would be an exaggeration to claim that it was only the recession that prevented upward career mobility. Other factors, including a mismatch of qualifications, the level of English language competency, lack of network resources and, last but not least, personal motivation also mattered. We have argued so far that the booming Irish labour market offered considerable job opportunities to migrants at different skill levels. However, there were of course instances where participants were not able to access their desired jobs or professions. The work career of Wiktor is an example of this. Wiktor, who previously worked in Poland in a number of manufacturing companies, came to Ireland in search of a higher income to build a house in Poland but also in search of a ‘better life’. He is a qualified electrician and certified forklift driver and has worked in Poland in a number of manufacturing companies. He would have liked to secure a job as a forklift driver in Ireland which he enjoyed doing: We went to FÁS (the Irish Training and Employment Authority) … I was looking for something with forklifts, but it required knowledge of English.

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And because my English was practically zero at the beginning … I ended up on a construction site where I still work today. (Wiktor, metal fixer, W1)

After having worked as a labourer for some months, he managed to somewhat improve his position by becoming a ‘metal fixer’ for which he bought his own tools and retrained. Nevertheless, he still aspired to become a forklift driver. However, in later interview waves he eventually resigned himself to his position as a manual construction worker. Interestingly, he, like some other participants, did not only attribute their limited career development to language and lack of career prospect but also to personal factors such as own ‘laziness’ and lack of personal motivation: Language is a huge obstacle for sure. Secondly it’s laziness. And thirdly … it doesn’t make any sense, speaking from (personal) experience, to show anything in here. Because in fact I work on a construction site here and it is the lowest level and I do realise that. And I don’t care … what’s going to happen will happen, I live day by day. The house is all I am interested in (he and his wife are saving money to build a house in Poland). (Wiktor, W4)

In spite of not having progressed career-wise, and in spite of a deterioration of work conditions which personally affected him, he still somewhat liked the construction job, if not his Irish superiors on building sites. Indeed, he regarded it as a new experience that gave him the idea of setting up his own construction business in Poland: I never had anything to do with construction … and in fact, as a job, I like it. Really, I like it, if only I didn’t have that management and the organisation of work as I have it in here. It (work atmosphere in Dublin) used to be different, you know. When I came here in the beginning and I learnt a bit, then it was something cool because I am creating something. You get an empty room and you need to make something out of it … So I would like to do that and that is why I would like to open a company in this profession. (Wiktor, W6)

Thus, Wiktor’s experience suggests that some migrants were not able to realise their initial career plans and remained employed in less-skilled jobs. However, his example also shows that such jobs were not necessarily perceived in a bad light, in particular if they were seen as only a temporary experience. This again underscores the importance of placing the work careers of migrants in a biographical context. This also became apparent in the case of Iza.

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Iza, who holds a master’s degree in Engineering Management, worked as a secretary in a computer company in Poland. She came over to Ireland with her then husband, mainly attracted by the prospect of a higher income. In Ireland, she was initially looking for an office job. However, just like Wiktor, Iza’s level of English prevented her from securing the desired job: I really wanted to work as a secretary, because I had the experience … as an administrator. It wouldn’t be any problem for me, but it was hard with the language. So there was one interview, second one, third one … and they could see that the language is not as it is supposed to be. (Iza, hotel waitress, W1)

Instead, she found a job as a waitress in an upmarket Dublin hotel for which she was recommended by a friend. However, this was not a position where she wanted to work long-term as she aspired to become a journalist. To further this ambition, she started a degree course in Intercultural Communication in Dublin and gained some journalistic experience with a Polish radio station all the time while working in the hotel. Although she was somewhat frustrated about her hospitality job, she quite liked the fact that she was a ‘casual’ in the hotel without a fulltime contract and regular work hours as this allowed her to juggle the job with her other interests. However, she was not interested in career development in the sector, even though there were some limited opportunities for promotion in her hotel: I don’t want that pressure, I don’t want that stress, only to get three Euros more (per hour) than I get as a waitress. I am not a careerist when it comes to this sector. So I completely don’t care. I even think, that if somebody offered me a full-time job in housekeeping or somewhere else, I would still say no. (Iza, W4)

As it transpired, she did not manage to become a journalist which she attributed to her lack of relevant personal networks in the Irish media scene, and also to her level of English language, even though it improved considerably. She continued working as a waitress in the hotel, although increasingly complaining in later interview waves about an intensification of work which she found unbearable. Hence, she decided to leave for a long holiday to Latin America, without, however, burning all bridges in Dublin: I can come back any time (to the hotel), the job is there, I ring them for shifts and I simply come back straight away. So I am not quitting, I simply told them that I am leaving for a few months. (Iza, W5)

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She stayed in Latin America for around half a year, which was quite a positive experience from a worklife point of view. She did some voluntary work, gained some new experience and, last but not least, met her new boyfriend with whom she returned to Ireland. They planned to stay in Ireland for a while to save some money and then return together to Latin America, underscoring the importance of the ‘libidinal factor’ (King, 2002) in migration decisions. When looking back at her work career in Ireland, she had somewhat mixed feelings. While she had not achieved her professional goals in Ireland, she nevertheless valued the money-earning purpose of the hospitality job: I would like to be a journalist and I would like to, you know, sit quietly at home, with a laptop and write some cool stories for people … (At the moment) I work in housekeeping and I am completely not achieving my professional goals. But excuse me, there are some priorities. If my priority is to earn some money, then I will do this working in housekeeping. (Iza, W6)

As in the case of Wiktor, Iza’s example suggests that the lack of a sufficient level of English, and in her case a possible lack of network resources, can be a serious obstacle to career development in the desired profession. Work-related relationships and external networks are of particular importance to develop ‘boundaryless careers’ outside the traditional organisational context (Arthur and Rousseau, 1996). If anything, this probably applies more to the media scene and the ‘creative industries’ than to other employment sectors. However, Iza is also an example of a group of migrants for whom even a low-wage job offered some opportunities to pursue a flexible lifestyle. Obstacles to career progression were not confined to migrants in lessskilled positions. Among some skilled professionals there was a perception of a ‘glass ceiling’ for top positions, in particular in management. Further, while many participants felt they had gained a range of new skills and competences in Ireland that might be helpful for subsequent career moves, there were also some obstacles to ‘knowledge transfer’ (Williams, 2006). We already mentioned the difficulty of getting Irish qualifications recognised in Poland, which has been reported by a number of respondents who worked in construction and in finance. There might be some further challenges as the case of Filip illustrates. Filip graduated with an MA in Finances and Banking in Poland. He had considerable international work experience in Human Resources management and IT but had never worked in his profession before coming to Ireland. Interestingly, he preferred to work in finance in Ireland

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where he thought he had better career opportunities than in Poland. He found a job through a recruitment agency in a mid-level managerial position in investment banking. The job required more generic soft skills such as ‘negotiating on the market’ rather than some specific, credentialised skills: I have an MA in Finances and Banking … (but) everything I’m doing here, that was never mentioned on the courses in Poland, because in Poland nobody does that kind of things, finance is totally different here … well that was a position for a person with somehow big potential, and I sold myself like that. (Filip, portfolio manager, W1)

In the bank, he worked in a number of different positions, but his was more a case of horizontal rather than vertical mobility as he assessed his chances for promotion rather negatively. In later interview waves, he became more frustrated about the job and considered moving to another position in financial services. However, the recession and his lack of network resources made this option less possible: I don’t know, it’s hard today to imagine career development in here, at least in my sector. Because not much new happens, at least for the moment … in my case some kind of difficulty is my lack of networks in here. Because even during my four years of working in the bank (in Ireland), I haven’t had contact with the Irish market, but with London, Europe, Asia, so in here I don’t have a kind of network of contacts. (Filip, W4)

He eventually decided to leave the bank job and return to Poland. However, in terms of his future employment career, he was rather negative about his chances of securing a job in financial services in Poland, not in spite of but rather because of his considerable work experience from abroad: [I]t could even be to my disadvantage, rather than my advantage, that I have never worked (in finance) in Poland, but always abroad … I am looking for a job in Poland for some time now and one requirement is knowledge of the Polish financial market, let me put it this way, quite sound knowledge, that I don’t have. (Filip, W4)

Thus, Filip’s work career suggests that even in a unified European labour market there are some obstacles not only to the transferability of formal qualifications and credentialised skills (Favell, 2008a) but also to ‘knowledge transfer’. Filip negotiated these circumstances by deciding to abandon his career in banking and to pursue a long-held aspiration

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to establish his own restaurant chain in Poland. While the knowledge and qualifications that he acquired as part of his previous bank job were not directly relevant for these plans, he nevertheless regarded this work experience as beneficial for his new career plans: I don’t know, all my previous jobs were to some extent based on project management or contact with other people, yeah. So in some sense this will be my job now too, work on new projects, meeting plenty of people, getting the information out of them or negotiating the conditions. (Filip, W5)

Thus, it might be rather more generic soft skills rather than ‘hard’ credentialised skills which might contribute to future career progress, in particular if the ‘boundaryless career’ not only crosses organisational but also national boundaries. Conclusion In this chapter, we documented the career paths of migrants, understood as sequences of work experiences over time. Such a focus on career and mobility enabled us to relate migrants’ stay in Ireland to their previous work experience in Poland and also to future career plans and prospects. Tracking migrants as they moved through the Dublin labour market showed a diversity of career paths. While some migrants began rather conventional careers, others took up jobs which were rather unrelated to their previous work experiences or for purposes other than traditional understandings of career progression. In many cases, these trajectories were rather unstable and could not be read off from individuals’ qualifications and employment histories from Poland. What was noticeable was the extent to which many of these careers were ‘boundaryless’ in that they were not confined to a single firm, occupation, sector or indeed nation state. As Polish migrants were not dependent upon a work or residence permit, they had considerable agency to construct their work careers outside the traditional organisational or national context. This of course did not mean that they could act free of any constraints. In particular, the 2008 recession was a structural constraint on the career aspirations of migrants, but so were other factors such as English language competency or lack of network resources. However, even in the recession there was scope for negotiation and agency, with some migrants moving to other employment sectors and/or retrained, whereas others adopted a wait-and-see approach through availing of social protection.

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What became apparent was the extent to which career choices were interwoven with lifestyle choices (Conradson and Latham, 2005). Indeed, some migrants quite deliberately pursued more lifestyleorientated goals rather than linear career progression. Some moved in and out of employment, took time off to travel to pursue adventures or took advantage of challenging circumstances such as unemployment or redundancy to follow their passions and dreams, be that doing volunteer work in Latin America or recording a music demo. Thus, ultimately migrants pursued worklife pathways that were part of a broader aspiration for self-development. These worklife pathways were inextricably linked to new technologies of mobility as we discuss now.

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7

Worklife connections: technologies of mobility and transnational lives

In this chapter, we show how the mobility behaviour of Polish migrants was enabled by new technologies of mobility, both physical and virtual. Especially low-cost air travel facilitated the initial migration move to Ireland and allowed for subsequent two-way traffic between the two countries. Many of our participants travelled regularly to Poland not only for family visits but also to continue to access basic services such as doctors and dentists. However, what was even more remarkable was the extent to which Ireland became a jumping-off point for visiting new places in Europe and beyond. Arguably, the Irish migration experience introduced many Polish migrants to a new world of mobility and travel as they began to discover new countries and destinations. In addition to physical movement, new information and communication technologies were of particular importance in maintaining transnational contacts. Our participants used a wide range of new technologies including mobile phones and web-based applications such as Skype and social networking sites to ‘keep in touch’ with friends and family back home in Poland. In fact, these virtual technologies of mobility became central to the transnational lives of our participants not only in terms of maintaining contact with ‘home’ but also in terms of creating new connections in Dublin. In conjunction with new travel opportunities, ICTs created a new experience of mobility beyond the ‘container’ of the nationstate, as Polish migrants increasingly lived a life ‘in-between’. Low-cost air travel and a new world of mobility New transport technologies, and especially low-cost air travel have transformed recent East–West migration. They have not only made the initial migration move easier but also facilitated regular travel back and forth (Burrell, 2011; Dobruszkes, 2009). Flight connections between Poland and Ireland rapidly expanded in the context of EU enlargement.

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By 2007, seven mainly low-cost airlines offered direct flights on thirtytwo routes between the two countries (Mac Cormaic, 2007). Almost all of our respondents had arrived by aircraft in Ireland. For quite a few of them, it was the first flight ever and they still had vivid memories of it: It was a direct flight, it was an evening flight. I landed in Dublin at 22:35 (and) I was travelling on my own. It was my first time at the airport and it was the first time when I heard plain English, on a plane, so I was horrified. In addition to that my cousin was supposed to pick me up and of course he forgot about me. (Bogdan, painter, W1)

Bogdan arrived in Ireland in 2006 at a time when there were already a substantial number of direct flights between the two countries. However, there was a somewhat different situation for some participants who had arrived earlier at a time when travel connections were less-welldeveloped: [It] was by plane from England … because then there were no direct (flights) from Warsaw to Dublin. I mean, there was one by LOT [Polish airline] but it cost 4,000 (Zlotys) for two people. So we flew to England, London, and from there the tickets were one cent only! (Karol, financial advisor, W5)

To a considerable extent, the rapid growth of low-cost flights and the demand for new flight connections mutually reinforced each other. There is little doubt that without fast-expanding air travel, mass migration between Ireland and Poland would not have occurred on the same scale. However, it was of course not only the availability of low-cost air travel but also the changed regulatory environment after 2004 which created a new experience of mobility. As recalled by Filip: I do remember how I used to fly, I don’t know, to England, these humiliating experiences on the border. For me it is a big, big change … And now I’m flying to London next month and I know it will be kind of (like a) bus ride, I go there for two nights only. (Filip, portfolio manager, W5)

The metaphor of a ‘bus ride’ is instructive and came up repeatedly in our interviews. Dorota, for instance, travelled frequently with Ryanair to Wales to visit her boyfriend: ‘It’s cool … I fly for about an hour … It’s like a bus, like a suburban train’ (Dorota, estimator, W5). However, there was by no means universal acclaim for Ryanair as there were frequent complaints about lack of space and service on their aircraft.

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Nevertheless, many of our respondents still travelled regularly with the airline which has the largest number of flight connections between Poland and Ireland: Every time I fly with them [Ryanair], I’m saying to myself: this is the last time! And unfortunately it is never the last time. And you always sit this way [put her legs as if it was in very tight space]. The truth is … this is the only airline that flies to Lodz, so I don’t have much choice … It’s cheaper, you have to admit it … (To go) to Spain I paid 20 Euros for return tickets, so you know, even though I don’t like them, I still fly with them. (Maria, floor supervisor, W5)

Air travel was a crucial factor in enabling the first move to Ireland. However, what was perhaps even more remarkable was the extent to which our respondents engaged in ‘post-migration mobility’ (Dobruszkes, 2009). One defining feature of East–West mobility has been continuous two-way traffic between Ireland and Poland. Most participants travelled to Poland at least once or twice a year since having moved to Ireland, some more often: ‘I mean, you know, Poland happens at regular intervals … I’d really like to go for Christmas, because I didn’t go last year. And I’m waiting all the time for a great deal from Ryanair’ (Ula, financial analyst, W5). Two-way traffic between Ireland and Poland did not only involve those who had made the move to Ireland but also friends and relatives coming over to Ireland for a visit: ‘My sister who lives in Poland visited me, my brother was also here. And my father, my mother, they have also been here, of course … and plenty of my friends have been here’ (Maciek, civil engineer, W5). In fact, some participants were even more likely to meet their relatives in Dublin than in Poland: I prefer my mum to come here. Probably because then she can see me and my sister [who also lived in Dublin] at the same time, rather than me going at one time and my sister not going … Very often I buy a ticket for my mum (online) so she simply comes here. (Iza, hotel waitress, W5)

What was noticeable was the extent to which migrants continued to travel to Poland to access a variety of services including doctors, dentists, hairdressers and retail in general. Two main reasons were usually put forward for travelling to access these services: lower costs and longestablished relationships of trust. Thus, while routinely visiting family and friends, participants used the opportunity to avail of services that they trusted and also that cost far less than in Ireland. In particular, the continued usage of medical doctors and dentists back home is quite a common experience among mobile Europeans (Favell, 2008a):

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When I go to Poland then I have my own dentist that I always go to . . . I don’t do that in Ireland, God forbids, because it’s too expensive over here. So usually when I am in Poland, then I go to the gynaecologist for sure, I go to the dentist, or any kind of check ups, I always do that in Poland. Of course, you have the doctors that you trust, and everything is cheaper. (Iza, hotel waitress, W5, emphasis added)

Importantly, new mobility patterns were not confined to two-way traffic between Poland and Ireland. In fact, the Irish migration experience introduced our respondents to a new world of mobility and travel. Back home in Poland, they were less likely to engage in frequent travelling due to lack of money and opportunities: [Y]ou didn’t have the money (in Poland) to go anywhere. Besides that there was no … freedom to travel like that … and company, because even if I had the money to go somewhere, then none of my friends had. (Dorota, estimator, W5)

However, once arrived in a ‘global city’ like Dublin with a well-connected airport, many began to explore new travel opportunities. Ireland became a jumping-off point for visiting new places, particularly in Europe and other Anglosphere destinations: Since I came to Ireland, where did I go to? New York, I always wanted to go (there). And in Europe, well, the UK again, Denmark again … I have been to Germany, I have been to France … I have been flying to Poland a lot, from work and for private reasons. (Oskar, project manager, W5)

While some of the travel was business-related, most of the journeys were undertaken for leisure purposes. As other research has shown, extensive travel is often part of the mobility experience of young, relatively welleducated migrants (Conradson and Latham, 2005). What emerged from our interviews quite strongly was a feeling of ease in booking short trips away as planning was often quite spontaneous: I said to the girls: ‘listen, girls, I’m having my 30th birthday and I would like to spend it in some cool way, I have free nights in Milan and if you are up for it, then let me know and I will book it’. They said: ‘no problem’, I booked the hotel, we booked the tickets and we went. (Iza, hotel waitress, W5)

This ease in organising and planning away trips was of course much facilitated by the Internet and online booking. Some participants even booked multiple tickets online in advance because of the low cost. In the

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case of Dorota, this allowed her flexibility to travel to Wales to see her boyfriend: When I know the dates of when I’m going, I simply check (online) … and I wait for a good deal. So for example now I have a return ticket bought for the 20th of November (and) the 26th of November, … because it (only) cost five Euros … that’s how I plan … XXX [her boyfriend] is now coming over for thirty pounds both ways, I even laugh that our relationship is sponsored by Ryanair! (Dorota, estimator, W5)

Thus, new mobilities were facilitated by new transport opportunities, and especially low-cost air travel. However, they were also inextricably linked to the ‘software’ of migration, new ICTs. Virtual technologies of mobility ICTs allow for instantaneous communication and the shrinking of time and space (Castells, 2000). As such they enable migrants to maintain social relations across long distances which makes the move abroad a more transient experience (Vertovec, 2004). This became visible in our research as migrants used a wide range of new technologies to stay in contact with friends and family back home in Poland and elsewhere. However, ICTs were not only used for ‘keeping in touch’ with the place of origin, but also increasingly for organising local activities at the new place of residence in Dublin. Komito and Bates (2009) argue that new ICTs reduce the ‘information deficit’ as migrants can now access information about the new destination in advance of the move. However, this was only confirmed to some extent by our research. When people were considering moving to Ireland, they did not primarily rely on Internet information but rather on the advice and support of informal social networks: I didn’t really search for the information, as my cousin was here … she organised it all, so I didn’t even know whether I’d have to learn Irish over here or whether I’d be able to communicate in English. So somehow I didn’t feel any pressure to get to know more before I came here. I knew I could rely on my cousin and that everything would be organised. (Rafal, medical professional, W5)

These informal networks were crucial in mediating the informational gap for those considering moving to Ireland as migrants often have higher levels of trust in networks of friends and family rather than in state institutions or strangers, even if they are co-ethnics (White and

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Ryan, 2008: 1469). While some used the Internet to gain information about work and life in Ireland, this was rather as an additional source of information to what they had received from friends and family who were already in Ireland: I was looking for the information on the Internet, yes, of course … (But) we had those acquaintances … It turned out in the end that we will come here and we will have a place to live and my husband will have a job so it [the Internet] didn’t matter at all at the later stage … And I was looking for a job through the Internet and some people got back to me, but as I was saying, and that’s what I think, in here the fastest way of getting a job is to get it through somebody. (Iza, hotel waitress, W5)

Once arrived in Ireland, informal social networks continued to play a crucial role in accessing employment, accommodation and other basic support. However, these networks were often quite transient and temporary. In other words, while Polish migrants continued to provide a support role for new arrivals, these connections often ended quite quickly once the initial support had been provided. This rather transient experience of social networks is well-captured by Maciek: Many people have changed in here, it’s a turnover, you know how it is. For so many years in here so many people have passed by, so many flats, so many places, so many people, paths and so on. (Maciek, civil engineer, W3)

That networks matter in the migration process is hardly news. However, what was novel was the extent to which a reliance on traditional forms of contacts (relatives and friends) intersected with new ICTs to create new connections and opportunities. ICTs acquired a growing importance in particular after the initial move to Ireland. To some extent, this was facilitated by more sophisticated broadband technology: there was a widespread perception among our participants that Internet connections were much faster in Ireland than in Poland. Since having arrived in Dublin, almost all reported a greater usage of a wide range of ICTs, including mobile phones, the Internet, email and web-based social networking sites. For some, these virtual technologies of mobility became so central to their lives that a breakdown of such connections sometimes triggered a feeling of ‘social absence’ (Urry, 2007: 178): ‘Now I don’t have an Internet connection, and I’m basically, as if I vanished into thin air’ (Anita, office clerk, W5, emphasis added). ICTs were not only a medium for communication with people back home but in fact became a way of life for some:

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It’s only in here that I felt it, Jesus, I can’t live without the Internet now! . . . I don’t know if the times have changed or I became older, more people use it. And people are more available through texts, you leave a message, you write an email or something like that, rather than meet up. And it became (something you do) not only for fun. Because you used to write an email to ask what was going on; but now it’s an important source of information, communicating, sharing important news with each other … it’s not (just) for fun anymore, but in order to deal with day-to-day stuff too. (Ewa, hotel receptionist, W5, emphasis added)

ICTs were of particular importance in facilitating communication across geographical distance. The phone (mobile and landline) remained the primary technology for maintaining transnational connections, followed by texting and web-based applications such as Skype, email and social networking sites. As Vertovec (2004) argues, ‘cheap telephone calls serve as a kind of social glue connecting small-scale social formations across the globe’ (2004: 220). Some respondents talked about routines that they followed when communicating with parents such as calling at a specific time, a specific day or in a few instances even every day: You wouldn’t have a single day when I wouldn’t call her … ‘Hey mum, how are you? Are you fine? I’m fine too’ … I feel much better, if it wasn’t for that, I would have been in Poland long time ago, or I wouldn’t have left in the first place … I can’t imagine life (here) without the Internet, without a mobile (phone). (Barbara, catering assistant, W5, emphasis added)

The advantage of Skype is of course that it includes a visual element. Kamil and his girlfriend were in regular weekly contact with their families via Skype. To facilitate this form of communication, they bought a laptop for his girlfriend’s family and installed all the necessary equipment: [T]hanks to the fact that we installed the hardware, we are able to keep in touch regularly … XXX [his girlfriend] can talk for an hour or more; with my parents it would be up to half an hour … my girlfriend and my soon-to-be mother in law were always very close, and they could spend (long) time on their mobiles despite the distance from Warsaw to Wroclaw. (Kamil, IT systems analyst, W5)

While more or less all of our respondents made extensive use of new ICTs, there were limits to the continuation of social relations in virtual space as these technologies ‘cannot bridge all the gaps of information and expression endemic to long-distance separation’ (Vertovec, 2004: 223). In spite of the possibility for regular transnational communication, migrants became more alienated from some of their friends back home:

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To be quite frank, I lose contact with my friends in Poland. Because people there, my friends, they settle down, set up families, have children. Their lives follow completely different paths, different realities. And I noticed they have completely different problems … I don’t know, they have more economic problems, related to survival from one day to another … links with people in Poland become looser and looser. (Ewa, hotel receptionist, W5)

Further, and rather paradoxically, new opportunities and new choices can create new pressures. ICTs facilitate regular contact with close family members in Poland which means that migrants are constantly up to date with all changing events at ‘home’. However, as they now can travel home relatively easily, this can require them to make difficult choices in the event of a family member falling ill or in need. Anita experienced such ‘heightened emotional strain’ (Vertovec, 2004: 223) when the health of her grandmother deteriorated: Because I haven’t been in Poland for the last year, I’m left with the telephone and Internet. But you know, recently I feel that it all gets further and further away … And now my granny is very ill, so I’ve been worried about her. I wanted to go to Poland, but they’re telling me it’s not bad, she’ll have an operation … I’m saying, ‘ok, granny is ill, I’d like to go to see her in the hospital’, but I can’t. I can’t because, ok, it’d be two hours on the plane, but, well, I can’t, you know what I mean. And that’s what I’m missing. (Anita, office clerk, W5)

While our participants maintained regular contact with family members in Poland, they also increasingly became embedded in social relations in Dublin. This became visible for instance in terms of phone communication. When asking participants in interview wave 3 about the last ten phone calls that they received, most calls were from Polish partners and friends living in Ireland, followed by calls from family members back home in Poland, and calls from international friends in Dublin, many of whom our respondents had met at work. Phone calls from Irish people were mostly work-related, although a few participants maintained friendships with Irish people as well. Invariably, mobile phone was used to keep in contact with friends and work colleagues in Dublin. In addition, many reported a greater use of social networking sites since having arrived in Ireland. The purpose of these sites was not only to maintain links with Poland and elsewhere but also to develop new connections at the new place of residence. Komito and Bates (2009) suggest that recently a new wave of social media has added to the options available to migrants. These include

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Internet applications which enable greater interaction between user and application through user-generated content such as video and photographs. The type of sites that have come on stream include Bebo, MySpace and Facebook where users can shape the type of postings they make through self-selection of content but also invite their friends and acquaintances to participate, hence constituting the ‘social networking’ element of these new technologies: You know, all that stuff like Nasza Klasa or Facebook, these really are of great help if you want to keep in touch with your friends, because you can upload a photo, and you don’t have to … send it to each person separately, you just upload it and you know, people write to you, you write something back, and so on, so that’s the easiest way. (Maria, floor supervisor retail, W5)

A variety of social networking sites were used by our participants. Polish websites appeared to be the most popular, particularly Nasza Klasa (our class) and Gadu-Gadu (chit-chat) although there were varying opinions on their relevance. Nasza Klasa is a large social networking application which targets pupils from Polish primary and secondary schools. Users are able to set up a personal page for past pupils to access and then share information and photos. This was a very popular social networking site in the mid-2000s, coinciding with the mass emigration of young Polish graduates.1 Most participants have been involved in Nasza Klasa at some point. It seemed to be particularly important to migrants who were interested in renewing old contacts from Poland: [I]t was the only chance to contact people from high school, of whom I didn’t have any phone numbers or anything. And when I was logging into my class profile, then there were about 20 people, some of them I wanted to invite to my bachelor’s party … I wanted to invite a few friends, and it was the only possibility, so it is actually cool from that point of view. (Pawel, site manager, W5)

However, the usage of such social networking sites could also be a reminder to migrants that their lives have taken on different pathways than the ones of former acquaintances and friends: [I]t seems to me people who sign up there, they try to … (show) how much they have achieved in their lives … and that kind of showing off. And I don’t like that. … Friends from my class … this one has a wife, another one has a husband, they went to I don’t know where, they work over there, they became well off, they have a flat, and so on … I take it

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a bit personally that I still don’t have … in terms of the future, I have … nothing for sure, nobody knows where I will be, I don’t have my own flat, I don’t have, I don’t know, a husband. (Ula, financial analyst, W5)

Gadu-Gadu is a Polish instant messaging website and was also quite popular. However, participants were also active on popular social networking applications such as Facebook and Bebo. The latter applications were more likely to be used with non-Polish-speaking acquaintances and friends, confirming previous research (Komito and Bates, 2009: 237): ‘So it (Facebook) is to keep in touch with let’s say my Anglophone contacts’ (Kamil, IT systems analyst, W5). However, these sites were also increasingly used for organising local social lives in Dublin: [Parties] were through Facebook … there was a general message to everybody in certain (Facebook) groups, you were getting a message, an invitation for a party. And that’s how you mainly talked … or some photos, or greetings, through Facebook. (Bogdan, painter, W5)

Thus, our respondents made use of a wide range of new ICTs to maintain transnational relations and to organise local activities. While many of these relations were with Polish people both in Ireland and in Poland, there was some noticeable interaction with international friends and colleagues. Hence, we only found limited evidence of ‘virtual ghettos’ in which migrants ‘create separate lives within the wider society in which they work and live’ (Komito and Bates, 2009: 243). Not only in terms of the workplace (as we documented in chapter five) but also in terms of social networking sites, many of our participants were in contact with non-Polish friends and colleagues, especially those who were migrants themselves. Importantly, new travel opportunities in conjunction with new communication technologies created an experience of mobility which was, if not by intent then at least in outlook, often quite international. This is well-illustrated by the case of Iza whose worklife pathway we already encountered in chapter six. Iza, who worked as a hotel waitress in an upmarket Dublin hotel, decided to take a long working holiday to Latin America where she started to do some voluntary work as an English language teacher. The initial contacts for this trip were made on Facebook: The plan was created because I always wanted to do something and to go to another country … This organisation that I go to in Latin America, I found all of these people somewhere through Facebook. It started with contacts and then we started to email each other. We are in touch all the

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time and we write to each other on MSN or we exchange news via email; that they are waiting for me and that they are looking forward to see me. As I am saying, now it is with everybody around the world. (Iza, hotel waitress, W5, emphasis added)

Sometimes our participants used ICTs in conjunction with physical travel to pursue new business opportunities. Take the case of Filip who in the middle of the recession in Ireland resigned from his job as a portfolio manager with a large international bank to set up his own restaurant chain in Poland. Through the use of the Internet and other virtual technologies, Filip and a group of his college friends renewed connections and began to develop the business idea. While ICTs were essential in developing the project, actual face-to-face meetings, involving physical travel, were indispensable in getting the project started (Wickham and Vecchi, 2010): [T]he project was created in our heads … but now technology helps us to contact each other and work on it [the project], as each of us is in a completely different place … So thanks to all of these weird tools we can work all together and have everything ready at hand. But the whole idea came from face-to-face meetings and chats. (Filip, portfolio manager, W5)

Thus, technologies of mobility allowed migrants to maintain social relations across geographic distance and to create new opportunities that sometimes transcended the nation state. Conclusion New technologies of mobility became central to the transnational lives of our participants. What was novel was less interconnection per se, but rather the dramatic acceleration of both the ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ of migration, new travel opportunities and ICTs. It was in particular the emergence of low-cost air travel which enabled the initial migration move and subsequent ‘post-migration mobility’ (Dobruszkes, 2009). Our respondents travelled regularly to Poland to visit family members and to continue accessing basic services such as dentists and doctors. However, what was even more striking was the extent to which Ireland became an access point to visit new places in Europe and beyond as Polish migrants discovered a new world of mobility and travel. New mobilities were not only facilitated by new travel opportunities but also by the ‘software’ of migration, new ICTs. These technologies were of particular importance in maintaining contact with friends and family members back home in Poland. However, ICTs were also used

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for building new connections at the new place of residence. As migrants became more embedded in social relations in Dublin, they increasingly used these technologies for organising local activities. Further, social networking sites were sometimes used for creating new contacts across the wider world. Thus, the intersection of physical and virtual technologies of mobility allowed for a transnational life beyond the ‘container’ of the nationstate and made the Polish migration experience a novel experience of mobility. Note 1 The importance of Nasza Klasa for Polish migrants in Ireland is well-illustrated by the fact that it was the eleventh most accessed site for Internet users, not in Poland but in Ireland! It had more Internet traffic than Allied Irish Banks (one of the two major banks in Ireland) and Radio Telefís Éireann (RTE) (the Irish state television and radio station) (Komito and Bates, 2009: 236).

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8

Looking back: worklife pathways in a boom-to-bust economy

This chapter examines how our participants assessed their time in Ireland. To what extent has the time in Ireland lived up to their initial expectations and aspirations? To what extent has it changed them? How do they envisage the future and how does this relate to their time in Ireland? As we show, whereas some thought that they advanced in the labour market, others felt they remained entrapped in some low-wage jobs. Nevertheless, even for them the move abroad was seen as a positive experience as they acquired new skills such as language competencies and developed from a personal point of view in that they became more self-reliant, mature and open to new influences. Whereas almost all respondents had arrived in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger boom years, the economic crisis and rising unemployment in 2008 meant that they had to re-adjust their strategies to a dramatically altered economic environment. For some, this was a contributory factor in returning to Poland or moving on elsewhere. For others, however, it meant staying in Ireland and trying to adapt to work and life in ‘PostCeltic Tiger’ Ireland. Even in a recession, the choices of migrants were not solely determined by economic circumstances as migrants continued to pursue different worklife pathways. Looking back: the worklife experience in Ireland When looking back on their time in Ireland, all participants assessed their time rather positively. No one regretted having made the move. Many claimed that the migration experience had been a transforming influence on their life. In particular, those who found employment in higher-skilled positions and progressed career-wise were quite upbeat about their time in Ireland. Oskar, for instance, was initially rather sceptical about whether he would find employment as an architect in Ireland:

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Well, I promised myself … that I would go over for a year, we would see what would happen and in the meantime I would look around if there are any possibilities to work in my profession … to be honest with you, it was merely in my imagination (to get a proper job) … first of all, different standards, secondly, the English … I thought that it would take a long time before I could start working in my profession. (Oskar, architect, W1)

As already shown in chapter six, his career in Ireland took off rather well as he soon found a job in his profession. After some time, he progressed into a managerial position in what was then a buoyant construction sector. Even in the recession, he managed to find a new job. In the final interview, he was very positive about his time in Ireland which he considered to be very useful for future career moves: I think that it (moving to Ireland) was the best decision that I (ever) made from a worklife point of view … I think it even exceeded (my expectations). I stayed longer than I was planning to … the job will hopefully take me to towards the direction that I want to take like leading one of the big projects in Poland. (Oskar, project manager, W6)

A strong theme from our research was that the booming Irish labour market offered considerable opportunities to migrants not only in low-wage jobs but also in more skilled positions. This was not necessarily something they had expected when arriving in Ireland. As explained by Anita: I came here with an assumption that ok, maybe I’d be able (to get) a good job. But, well, come on, (to get) a higher office position in a foreign country, well, no way … But it turned out that I’m doing pretty well, and especially in this company … in the last six months I’ve had loads of trainings … These are really things that I think I wouldn’t have got in Poland. And then working in English . . . (Anita, office clerk, W6)

Around half of our twenty-two participants managed to advance in the labour market during their time in Ireland, even though the recession brought a halt to upward career mobility. However, as discussed in chapter six, not all participants did progress career-wise, in spite of earlier aspirations. Consider the case of Barbara who started working in Ireland as a catering assistant. In 2008, this was not where she expected to stay: I have experience from an office in Poland. And I’d prefer to pursue that direction in here as well, I don’t know, maybe to some bank, or perhaps rather more in the economics area, basically. When my English is better, I’ll change job for sure. (Barbara, catering assistant, W1)

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She never did change her job as a catering assistant. By 2010, her job began to seem worse than what she had already experienced in Poland: It’s worse. In Poland I had … I mean I had a different position, and in here I work only in a canteen, let me put it this way. And in Poland I worked in an office, in logistics, so, you know, white shirt, jacket. (Barbara, W6)

Thus, in spite of their initial aspirations, some remained stuck in lowwage jobs, especially in hospitality. Nevertheless, most were still rather positive about the migration experience. In spite of her disappointment of not having progressed career-wise, Barbara still saw the benefit in having made the move to Ireland: I became much more self-reliant, you know, I am able to support myself. It’s easier for me to live over here than it would be in Poland. (Barbara, W6)

Thus, even a low-wage job in Ireland offers migrants the opportunity to live a ‘normal life’ (Galasińska and Kozłowska, 2009), which they may not find in Poland. Further, employment in lesser-skilled jobs does not necessarily represent a case of labour market entrapment as migrants may acquire certain skills such as social and language competencies that could be of use in a later stage of their career (Williams, 2009b). This is well-illustrated by the case of Bogdan, who, from the beginning, envisaged his stay in Ireland as only temporary: I simply want to stay for another year and go back to Poland. And in Poland I have a well-prospering company that is now managed by my brother and my father and I want to join them (at some stage). (Bogdan, painter, W1)

In Ireland, he worked for most of the time as a self-trained painter. After returning to Poland, he initially envisaged opening up his own construction company with a friend. He soon discarded this idea, however, to join the family business instead. In this new position, his English language skills have proven invaluable and he was generally very positive about the migration experience: I now use (English) almost every day, mainly through contacts with German and French (clients) … We don’t have to bring in a translator, I do it all myself. I have new life experience … I also worked as a painter, so that’s very positive. And after coming back from Ireland to Poland I have more power, more energy. (Bogdan, W6)

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Thus, most participants who were employed in less-skilled jobs were still rather positive about their time in Ireland as they gained new skills and experiences. Arguably, the move abroad can be considered part of a broader aspiration for self-development for young Europeans in particular (Kennedy, 2010). When looking back on their time in Ireland, many participants claimed that the migration experience had a transforming influence on their life in that they became more self-reliant, reflective and open towards new influences: Emigration, the first thing that it forces you to do is to confront yourself. Because you land in a new reality, you know, a completely new reality … and it is only in here where you can find out how flexible you are, and to what extent your life experience or any kind (of experience) is useful. You have to do this kind of review of yourself … And it always works out for good … It has really changed me … I don’t know, I matured in many ways. (Maciek, civil engineer, W6)

Such a greater sense of self-development also applied to the work experience in a multinational environment: ‘My work is, it could be said, multicultural … And because of that I kind of, you know, see things from a few different perspectives, more than it used to be the case in Poland’ (Miroslaw, chef, W6). To what extent did a greater openness impact upon traditional notions of national identity? As young Polish migrants are one of the beneficiaries of a unified Europe in which borders have come down, can we observe a greater sense of a pan-European identity among them? Migration, multiple identities and European citizenship One theme that has gained greater prominence in recent years is the extent to which increased cross-border mobility goes hand in hand with a greater sense of European identity. While few Europeans think of themselves primarily as ‘European’, a substantial part of the European populace consider themselves both ‘European’ and members of a particular nation – usually with the nation in first place (Fligstein, 2008: 141–142). This multilayered identity is situational in that it may well vary with the individual’s specific social and geographical location. In particular, mobile Europeans are more likely to espouse some European identity (Recchi, 2008). On this basis, the experience of moving from Poland to Ireland might be associated with a stronger sense of European identity.

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To some extent, this has been corroborated by our research. Most of our respondents still viewed themselves as primarily Polish. However, this was a rather non-essentialist and non-collectivist view of ethnicity which was quite compatible with other expressions of identity (Eade et al., 2006: 15). Whereas only a few thought of themselves as primarily ‘European’, many saw their Polish identity increasingly complemented with some sense of belonging to ‘Europe’. However, this was less an emotional attachment to ‘Europe’ as such, but a more rightsbased understanding of what it means to be European. In particular, the freedom to cross borders represented to many the very essence of what it means to be ‘European’: You can travel without your passport and they don’t check you on the border … For me it meant that I was able to leave … (The) freedom of living, travelling, working, contact with a multitude of cultures. And what comes with freedom is an availability of options: when I want to do something and it is in Greece, I can do that. (Kamil, IT support, W6)

Thus, young Poles, like their West European peers, increasingly make use of their free movement rights which arguably represents the cornerstone of European citizenship (Recchi, 2006). While our respondents did not explicitly mention the concept of European citizenship, they were quite aware of its rights-based content: ‘That’s what I like, I can go here, I can go there, live here, live over there, that’s cool. And I am a European, and I will be treated like a European everywhere’ (Maciek, civil engineer, W6, emphasis added). When looking back on their time in Ireland, many of our participants claimed that they have become more open towards other people and cultures. However, this was not necessarily confined to Europe. Some exhibited a certain cosmopolitan attitude that looks beyond the continent and that has also been found in other research on the attitudes of young, mobile Europeans (Kennedy, 2010): I feel European, basically a citizen of the world. It’s not that I don’t have my national identity … but I’m not that much attached (to it) as the generation of my grandparents. And maybe it’s that I am not only European but a citizen of the world … in here I have contact with the wider world, not only Europe … and we’re all in here together. (Anita, office clerk, W6)

Thus, movement away from a purely Polish national identity could well be towards some form of cosmopolitan or global identity rather than to some specifically European identity, especially if emigration from Poland

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was seen as a way of leaving Poland, rather than going somewhere else in particular. In this case, ‘Europe’ is a synonym for the wider world. However, our participants were well aware that it is only in Europe they possessed certain inalienable rights. The fact that as EU citizens they have similar residence, labour and social rights as Irish nationals was likely to be the main reason why only a very few seriously considered applying for Irish citizenship. Whereas for many non-EU immigrants application for citizenship remains the main route towards a secure residence, EU migrants already are quasi-citizens in Ireland. This affords them social protection and mobility opportunities even in the case of unemployment: ‘If I lose a job I can get social welfare … if I wouldn’t be from the EU, I wouldn’t be able to get it. We can feel we are on the same par as if we are in our country’ (Barbara, catering assistant, W6, emphasis added). This safety net proved to be of considerable importance in the economic downturn. Mobility strategies and worklife pathways in a recession In many aspects, this book has been about telling the stories of migrants as Ireland has gone from ‘boom to bust’. It is testimony to the boom years of the ‘noughties’ that provided plenty of opportunities for natives and migrants alike. However, it also documents how the 2008 recession transformed the work experience. Recurrent themes in later interview waves were an intensification of work, unemployment for some and less opportunities for career mobility for others. To what extent has the economic crisis impacted on the future mobility strategies of migrants? Polish and other NMS migrants have been particularly badly hit by the downturn, with their unemployment rate having risen to 20 per cent. At the same time, the recession has not changed the situation of Ireland as a country that is host to a substantial migrant population. As of the beginning of 2011, NMS migrants still accounted for 6 per cent of the Irish labour force. While some significant migrant outflows occurred, many migrants remained in Ireland, in spite of the crisis. This was borne out at the micro-level of our study. When we completed our study in 2010, sixteen out of our twenty-two participants were still in the country. This was for a variety of reasons, including continuous employment, social welfare arrangements and ‘quality of life’ issues. We have argued so far that a significant share of contemporary cross-border mobility in Europe cannot be understood solely within the logic of economic rationality. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that even in a downturn, migrants continue to follow worklife pathways that are not just influenced by economic circumstances but also involve

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non-economic factors, including lifestyle choices. In fact, our interviews suggest that the economic crisis was only one factor which influenced the future mobility strategies of migrants. Among those participants who remained in Ireland at the end of our study, we can distinguish between two groups, stayers and explorers. Stayers represented the smaller group of the two. They saw their longterm future in Ireland and were normally quite settled and in stable relationships. Because of their long-term plans in Ireland, they were effectively the only participants who were seriously considering applying for Irish citizenship which they thought would make life easier in terms of travelling outside of the EU and possibly purchasing property in Ireland.1 Stayers included people like Miroslaw. Miroslaw who ‘always liked the country’ came to Ireland on the advice of some of his friends who were already here, again underscoring the importance of informal networks in the migration process. At the same time, Miroslaw’s case suggests that these networks were often quite fluid and transient. He only stayed with his friends for a while and then moved in with his Polish girlfriend. He found a job as a chef assistant in a Dublin restaurant, even though he did not have any qualifications or experience in that area. Already at the beginning of our study, he thought of his stay in Ireland as long-term: I think that I want to stay here, for some time, for a longer time … I would like to live here. Somehow the perspective of going back to Poland doesn’t make me happy. I just think that it’s better for me to live here … I have much more opportunities here … and you can learn a lot, meet a lot of interesting people, you know, and you can learn a lot … So at the moment I’m planning to stay. Because I’m happy, let me put it that way. (Miroslaw, chef, W1)

After some months, he was promoted towards the position of chef and floor supervisor in the restaurant. While he quite liked his job, he also very much valued the ‘quality of life’ in Ireland, which was an important factor why he wanted to stay in the country long-term: I care about people who I work with, I like living in this country, you know, I like the lifestyle. (Miroslaw, W2)

What he particularly appreciated was a fairly ‘laid-back’ attitude towards work, which was a recurrent theme in our interviews: [M]aybe work isn’t that important for people here, you know, to an extent that it is in Poland … (in Poland) all that is important is work,

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work, work … I think that in here people have a more laid-back attitude towards work … I would simply like to stay here … I haven’t thought about moving to another country. (Miroslaw, W4)

At the end of our study, the atmosphere in the restaurant had somewhat deteriorated, which made him consider leaving the job in the hospitality industry. However, the recession did not alter his commitment to a longterm stay in Ireland where he increasingly felt ‘at home’. Whereas stayers were relatively clear in terms of their future plans, explorers were less certain about their future destination. Explorers were the most numerous group in our interview sample and included around half of our participants. What united this group was that they were often quite uncertain about their long-term plans. In fact, many deliberately tried to keep their options open through what has been called a strategy of ‘intentional unpredictability’ (Eade et al., 2006). Dorota was quite explicit about the ‘absence of a plan’: I don’t know however what exactly I am looking for … Listen, if you had asked me three months ago about my plans then it would have been my life with XXX [her then boyfriend], maybe a child. Everything got upside down … My plan is the absence of a plan. (Dorota, estimator, W1, emphasis added)

Dorota worked as an estimator in a multinational company in Dublin. In parallel, she also started to pursue a part-time engineering degree in Ireland. During the course of our study, Dorota lost her job as the company closed down its Irish subsidiary. However, this did not make her consider leaving Ireland. She instead applied for unemployment benefit and was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly the application process worked in Ireland: I got it [Job Seekers Benefit] within a week’s time. I was even surprised that it was so fast … I was getting the dole before that job … they had all of my papers revised before so they only updated them … It is only for nine months … And then you can try to get that Job Seekers Allowance. (Dorota, W5)2

Our interviews showed quite clearly that considerations of welfare benefits in Ireland did not feature in the initial migration decision. However, in times of economic crisis and rising unemployment, migrants increasingly utilised their welfare entitlements to cushion the impact of unemployment. Of particular importance was that as EU citizens, Polish migrants have similar welfare rights as Irish citizens.

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In other words, they were part of the ‘community of legitimate welfare receivers’ (Bommes, 2000). In the case of Dorota, these benefits offered her some breathing space to focus on her studies and to be somewhat selective in new job applications as she did not want to take up ‘just any job’. At the end of our study, she was still unemployed and somewhat uncertain about her future intentions. When asked about where she would see herself in five years’ time, she replied: I don’t know yet where I can see myself in one year from now, not to mention five years (laughing) … I don’t know, maybe … in some windenergy plant in Wales (where her current boyfriend is from) … or in some research related to sustainable energy. (Dorota, W6)

Explorers were looking at a number of different mobility options for the future. Whereas some were considering returning to Poland, others thought about moving on elsewhere, including to the traditional Englishspeaking immigration countries such as Australia, Canada and the USA. Others again were not ruling out a longer stint in Ireland. Noticeably, the mobility plans of explorers were less clear cut and quite open to change. Take the case of Ewa who initially regarded her time in Ireland as a stepping stone towards another destination in the Anglosphere: I mean I would like to change to some English-speaking country … I would like to do something specific in here, get some specific education (in the area of HR or sales management), get some specific diploma, so that I can let’s say apply for a visa to Canada, for example … definitely an English-speaking country. (Ewa, hotel receptionist, W1)

In Dublin, she was initially employed as a receptionist in a hotel and after some time was promoted to the position of junior service manager. However, she eventually lost her job as the hotel closed down. She nevertheless found a new job in another hotel as receptionist. Compared to the previous job, this was a demotion, and the new job turned out to be quite intense as she had to carry out many duties. However, when asked whether she would return to Poland she was quite adamant: I didn’t consider it at all, I knew I didn’t want to return to Poland and I wanted to stay in here, even if I’d have to take up any other job, in order to be able to support myself in some way … in here, even if you do a basic job, you are able to support yourself financially. And even if what you can afford is quite small, you still feel more self-reliant than in Poland. (Ewa, W4)

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Thus, Ewa’s example suggests that even in a recession there are still work opportunities which may compare rather well to the employment situation in Poland. At the end of our study, she expressed hope that in the near future she would reach a managerial position in hotel reception. This could be in Ireland or indeed in another English-speaking country: I was always pulled by the wider world. I always knew I wouldn’t want to live in Poland, I wouldn’t stay there … This country (Ireland) became a home for me, as I’m saying. But I don’t know if I will stay here … I don’t exclude the option that let’s say one day I will say that I want to go to England or to the US or to another English speaking country. (Ewa, W6)

Thus, continuous employment opportunities and relatively generous welfare benefits combined with lifestyle choices were important factors for a majority of our respondents in choosing to remain in Ireland. Whereas stayers were quite settled in Ireland, explorers were still considering different mobility opportunities that may take some back to Poland or indeed to another country in Europe or elsewhere. How about our respondents who had left Ireland when we conducted the final interview waves? There is little doubt that some of the recent migrant outflows were linked to deteriorating economic circumstances as many Polish and other NMS migrants lost their jobs in the construction sector in particular (Krings et al., 2011). At the same time, it appears that some of this movement probably would have occurred regardless of the recession in light of the new mobility patterns that are characteristic of East–West migration. In fact, for the six participants who had left Ireland for France, North America and Poland by the end of our study, the reasons for leaving were more complex than simply a response to deteriorating economic circumstances. While the recession was certainly a factor, other reasons included new career opportunities elsewhere including setting up a business in Poland as well as lifestyle choices such as following the partner to another country or the desire to move to another continent. Among those who left, we can distinguish two groups, returners and movers. Marek was a typical returner. He arrived in Ireland in 2005. As his main aim was to earn some money, he quite consciously targeted the construction sector where wages were significantly higher even for lowskilled positions than in other employment sectors (Bobek et al., 2008): I wasn’t looking for any other kinds of jobs, the jobs for less money. Because I was focused on earning the money in here and you could earn the money in these (construction) jobs. (Marek, construction labourer, W1)

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After having worked in a number of low-skilled construction jobs in Ireland, he returned to Poland in 2008 where he started to work in the family business. While he was made redundant in his last construction job, this was not the main reason for his leaving as he always considered his stay in Ireland as only temporary. In spite of not having progressed career-wise, he was quite content with his worklife experience in Ireland: I was going to Ireland with an attitude that I would probably work in construction … and that’s how it was. Maybe I made a mistake that I didn’t try to get a better job elsewhere. But I felt good with what I was doing … Maybe I am not too ambitious but it was ok … I knew that I was in that country rather temporarily. (Marek, W6)

Whereas returners were already at the beginning of our study relatively certain about their plans for return, movers, who were smaller in numbers, were more open-minded about their future destinations. What was distinctive about the latter group was that they saw their time in Ireland as part of a journey that might take them to another country. Take the case of Kamil who worked for a number of multinational IT companies. While he quite liked his job in Ireland, he was also considering the possibility of moving to other cities and countries: [I]f something great comes up, I’d be able to jump there. That wouldn’t make any difference if that was Dublin, Los Angeles, or Rio de Janeiro. (Kamil, IT systems analyst, W2)

As it transpired, he moved to Strasbourg at the end of our study. The broader context for this was that he was made redundant in the IT company in Dublin. However, as this was by mutual agreement, he was not too disappointed about this development, not least because he received ‘a very nice redundancy package’. In fact, he had wanted to leave Dublin at around that time anyway because of new life circumstances: (Initially) I wanted to stay in Ireland. But this changed in August 2008 when I met somebody in Poland, so then it didn’t make sense anymore … it was still an open path … we decided that we were both moving to Strasbourg. (Kamil, W6)

Kamil moved to Strasbourg because of a new relationship. As this example shows, it is not only work-related circumstances which influence the mobility strategies of migrants.

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The weeks before he left Ireland he received unemployment benefit which he was able to transfer to Strasbourg. Under EU rules, a person who is getting Jobseeker’s Benefit in Ireland can transfer their claim to another member state for up to thirteen weeks in order to look for work in that country. Our interviews revealed that migrants were increasingly aware of this transnational dimension of welfare rights (Kvist, 2004). For Kamil, these benefits enabled him to bridge the time in which he was without employment as he initially encountered some difficulties in securing a new IT job in Strasbourg. He eventually secured a job through a recruitment agency in an IT department of an international manufacturing company which did not require knowledge of local languages. In the first few months, he felt somewhat uprooted in the city which is not an uncommon experience among mobile professionals (Favell, 2008a). However, he was quite happy about the fact that he was living with his girlfriend in Strasbourg: I think that because of the way I work here, I mean that I only have a temporary contract, I feel a little bit like I am here only for a while … Maybe I’m not that glad about the job, but I’m happy about life, or at least the direction of it. I used to say to myself, that when I meet the one, I would follow her even to Australia. But I didn’t have to go that far away, it was enough to go to France. (Kamil, W6)

Both of them envisaged staying in Strasbourg for some years until possibly returning to Poland. He was quite optimistic that with his international experience in IT he could relatively easily secure a new job or perhaps even start his own business in his native country. When looking back on his time in Ireland, he felt that he greatly developed from a worklife point of view: [I]n Ireland I learnt that there is a world outside Poland … I learnt for instance that life is not only about work. I learnt that you could walk the hills and green (fields) and be impressed by these, and that you didn’t have to necessarily climb the highest mountains in order to reach the peak. (Kamil, W6)

What became apparent at the end of our study was that the recession was only one factor in influencing the mobility strategies of migrants. While the crisis might have accelerated the mobility behaviour of some, for most of our returners or movers migration was a transient and temporary experience. They therefore probably would have left Ireland even without the recession.

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Conclusion When looking back on their time in Ireland, all of our participants saw their time rather positively. In particular, those who progressed careerwise were quite upbeat about the migration experience. Even those who remained working in rather low-skilled jobs were still positive about the time spent abroad: they had earned some money, gained new experiences and improved their English. Moreover, many thought that they developed from a personal point of view, becoming more self-reliant, reflective and open to new influences. They appreciated living and working in a multinational work environment and they had a greater sense of ‘belonging to ‘Europe’. For many, being part of Europe meant the freedom to cross borders and to have the same social rights and welfare entitlements as native citizens. Such rights acquired a greater importance during the recession and rising unemployment. As some of our respondents lost their jobs, welfare benefits offered some ‘breathing space’ to re-assess the situation. While some participants had left Ireland by the end of our study, this was only in part linked to deteriorating labour market conditions. Many stayed, for the moment at least, and tried to adapt to work and life in ‘post-Celtic Tiger’ Ireland. What became apparent was that the recession was all but one factor in influencing the future mobility strategies of Polish migrants. Notes 1 Seven of our twenty-two participants owned properties in Poland, though none in Ireland. Interestingly, some bought these apartments with the help of their parents while living in Ireland, mainly as a personal investment for the future. 2 However, there were also reports from our stakeholder interviews of severe delays in accessing entitlements and also claims of ‘inconsistent interpretation’ of the welfare guidelines by Social Welfare Officers (interview, Crosscare, 2009).

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Conclusion: new mobilities in the new Europe

Carefree I’d say. It was an easy life, I got a fantastic job very easily, there was always enough money, I didn’t have any serious problems. I remember it as, well, a long holiday. (Filip)

EU enlargement in 2004 transformed the landscape of European migration. Since then, over one million mainly young Polish and other NMS migrants moved ‘West’, especially to Ireland and the UK. In this book, we examined recent East–West mobility through a case study of Polish migration to Ireland. Drawing on repeat interviews with a group of mainly skilled Polish migrants in the Dublin labour market, we documented how this migration was, above all, characterised by new mobility patterns. These mobilities were enabled by the EU free movement regime and new travel opportunities which provided the context for a more transient and individualistic form of migration. While our QPS only included a relatively small number of Polish migrants, we suggest that their mobility trends are indicative of a broader trend across Europe. Especially younger and more educated Europeans increasingly make use of their free movement rights in the new European mobility space. New mobility patterns were visible in particular in relation to frequent travel and movement. Facilitated by low-cost air travel, most of our participants travelled regularly between Ireland and Poland. However, what was perhaps even more striking was the extent to which the Irish migration experience introduced them to a ‘new world of mobility’. Once arrived in a ‘global city’ like Dublin with a well-connected airport, many began to explore new travel opportunities. Arguably, Ireland became a jumping-off point for visiting new places in Europe and beyond. These mobilities were not only facilitated by new travel opportunities but also by the ‘software’ of migration, new ICTs. ICTs were of particular importance in maintaining contact with friends and family members back home in Poland but also for building new connections at the new

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place of residence. What made the Polish migration experience a novel experience of mobility was the intersection of physical and virtual technologies of mobility which allowed for a transnational life beyond the ‘container’ of the nation state. Our interviews very much illustrated how the right to free movement transformed the migration experience. As ‘free movers’, Polish migrants no longer required a work or residence permit. This afforded them considerable opportunities and choices to construct their own worklife pathways. Indeed, for some the work experience became ‘boundaryless’ in that employment was not confined to a single firm, sector or, indeed, nation state. Importantly, Ireland’s goldrush labour market did not only provide employment opportunities for migrants in less-skilled jobs, but also in more qualified positions. Not all participants advanced in the labour market and some remained stuck in low-wage jobs. However, even the latter were still rather positive about their time in Ireland as they gained new experiences and felt they developed from a personal point of view. While many Polish migrants were attracted to Ireland by the prospect of jobs and a higher income, this was no longer the traditional pattern of labour migration. Non-economic motives such as the desire to travel and to learn the English language were present even at the early stages of the move abroad. Moreover, the longer our respondents stayed in Dublin, the more issues such as ‘quality of life’ and personal self-development acquired a greater importance. This also applied to the work experience. For some, the job was part of a ‘project of self-realisation’ (Kennedy, 2010). For others, it was a means to finance a mobile lifestyle. Informal social networks certainly mattered in terms of accessing starter jobs or finding accommodation. However, often these connections were more transient and short-term than traditional ‘thick’ immigrant networks. As ‘free movers’, our respondents had more opportunities and choices than migrants from outside of the EEA. Whereas the latter are more dependent on close knit family and friendship networks to access employment and housing (McGrath and Murray, 2011), our participants pursued more individualistic strategies that were less reliant on strong ethnic ties. Whereas almost all of our respondents had arrived in Ireland during the Celtic Tiger boom years, the recession of 2008 meant that they had to re-adjust their strategies to a dramatically altered labour market situation. For some, the crisis was a contributory factor in their decision to return to Poland or move on elsewhere. Others, however, continued to see their long-term future in Ireland. Others again adopted a ‘wait-andsee’ approach and tried to keep their options open, being quite reluctant

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to make long-term plans. Thus, in spite of the recession Polish migrants continued to pursue different worklife pathways that were not entirely determined by economic circumstances. To track these pathways as Ireland moved from ‘boom to bust’ was the most obvious (and rather unexpected) benefit of a repeat interview methodology. Some methodological reflections We opted for a QPS to study the movements of a group of Polish migrants in a dynamic manner. Whether they stayed in Ireland, returned to Poland or moved on to other countries, we tracked their careers and aspirations through six interview waves. This methodology allowed us to study movement across national and organisational boundaries and to uncover the new mobility patterns of East–West migration. We were able to contextualise the information from each interview wave in the respondent’s worklife biographies and to link these biographies to the broader socio-economic context. We, of course, did not anticipate that this socio-economic context itself would change so dramatically in the course of the study. However, in retrospect this change at the macrolevel was a vindication of a research strategy that sought to follow the work careers of migrants over a longer period. A biographical approach was useful in illuminating how migrants’ understanding of their situation was related both to past experiences and future expectations. Through a repeat interview methodology we were able to see how these understandings, expectations and aspirations changed over time. How some of our respondents assessed their work experience at the end of our study was quite different to how they viewed it in the first interview waves. Some became frustrated with their careers because they did not manage to realise their initial ambitions. Others expressed delight about their career progression as they initially had rather low expectations. How some of our respondents saw their future in 2010 was quite different to how they saw their future in 2008. In short, a QPS enabled us to trace migrant careers and to see how their understandings and expectations kept changing as they encountered new opportunities and challenges. The purpose of qualitative research is not only to illuminate the selfunderstandings, ambitions and aspirations of individuals but also to discover new concepts and themes (e.g. Silverman, 1993). We certainly ‘discovered’ some topics that we did not necessarily expect to come up with at the outset of our study. Among these was the extent to which the Irish migration experience introduced our participants to a new world of mobility and travel. Further, the fact that some of our participants in

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less-skilled positions deployed similar mobility strategies as their peers in higher-skilled occupations was not something that we had necessarily expected. Evidently, the ‘free movers’ concept does not just apply to highly skilled mobile Europeans (Favell, 2008a). Moreover, in spite of widespread assumptions of Polish migrant workers, we were struck by the extent to which the choices of our respondents were influenced not only by work considerations but also by lifestyle issues. Linked to this, and again underscoring the importance of a biographical approach, was a perception of a positive work culture in Ireland which was seen as less hierarchical and authoritarian than in Poland. This was again not something that had so far received a great deal of attention in migration and employment research. Qualitative research is no substitute for quantitative research. It is only the latter which can make generalisations based on representative population samples. At the same time, we would argue that a qualitative approach, in particular if it is based on a longitudinal methodology, is able to accomplish things which quantitative research is less able to do. It is at least doubtful whether we would have discovered some of our concepts with a questionnaire-based large-scale survey. Here a biographical approach based on repeat interviews offered insights into the ‘context, contingency and the unpredictability of life stories and circumstances’ (Favell et al., 2006: 6). With twenty-two participants, our QPS involved only a relatively small number of migrants. We therefore do not claim that our study is representative of Polish migrants in Ireland, especially as our interview sample was skewed towards the better-educated in more skilled positions. A greater focus on skilled migrants was essential for two reasons: For a start, the experience of NMS migrants in higher-skilled employment remains under-researched. Furthermore, we wanted to study recent Polish–Irish migration in terms of a new mobility experience across Europe where the available evidence suggests that it is in particular the better-educated who are more mobile (Kennedy, 2010; Recchi, 2008). In fact, our findings suggest that young, mobile Poles increasingly resemble their West European peers by pursuing flexible worklife pathways in the new European mobility space. Although this is no longer traditional labour migration, work and employment remains crucial to this East–West mobility. To gain an understanding of how and why migrants were recruited in a goldrush labour market, it was essential that we also interviewed employers and managers in the four sectors in which the participants of our QPS worked: construction, hospitality, financial services and IT. What became apparent was that in particular during the boom years the choices of both sides of the

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employment relationship reinforced each other: as employers were rapidly expanding their workforces, more and more migrants were attracted to Ireland by the prospect of a sheer endless supply of new jobs. The book, therefore, took an actor-centred approach to the study of migration and employment that located the choices of both sides in the particular socio-economic context in Ireland at the beginning of the twenty-first century: an unprecedented economic boom, a massive demand for additional labour and an open labour market. Polish–Irish migration and the future of the European mobility space Polish–Irish mobilities are likely to continue. Future movements will be smaller in numbers than in the aftermath of EU enlargement when ‘unusual circumstances’ (Massey et al., 1998: 10) coincided that triggered a wave of mass migration. However, we are likely to see continuous travel and two-way traffic between the two countries as the Polish–Irish migration system remains in place. In fact, new linkages, including business connections and tourism, may emerge in the future as the two countries become more connected in the context of large-scale migration flows (Hennessy, 2011). There is little doubt that Polish migration has left a lasting impact on Irish society. In spite of the recession and rising unemployment, the most recent 2011 Census counted over 120,000 Polish migrants as living in Ireland, accounting for almost 3 per cent of the whole population. However, in recent years migration trends have somewhat reversed. Since 2009, more people were leaving the country than moving into it. Whereas initially a majority of these emigrants were recent migrants especially from Poland and other NMS, in 2011 more Irish than nonIrish nationals were leaving the island. Irish emigration is back on the agenda. Of all people who left over the twelve months to April, almost half were under the age of twenty-five (CSO, 2011a). These outflows may even further increase, with a majority of current Irish students considering moving abroad after graduation (Nihill, 2011). Thus, as with young Poles ten years ago, it is the younger and better-educated Irish who are leaving the country in droves, sometimes with a sense of adventure, but often also with fury that their society has failed them. Irish mobility, however, is less European than earlier Polish mobility. According to a survey on recent Irish emigrants, almost 80 per cent had moved to Anglophone countries, and especially to Australia, New Zealand and the UK (Collins, 2012). One likely reason for this is that unlike the economic crisis of the 1980s when many young Irish moved

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to mainland Europe, comparatively few have any facility in a continental European language nowadays. Further, comparatively few have a technological or scientific qualification for which there is a particular demand in countries such as Germany. Thus, while for many young Poles in the 2000s, Dublin became closer than Warsaw, for the young Irish today, Sydney is closer than Krakow – or even Berlin. Thus, contemporary mobility is not confined to Europe. This is further confirmed if we take a look at recent migrant flows from Southern Europe. As with Ireland, Portugal, Greece and Spain have seen a dramatic increase in youth unemployment which has risen to 50 per cent in the latter two countries. In the context of the crisis, the number of young Portuguese and Spaniards who moved to former colonies such as Angola, Argentina or Brazil has hugely risen (Ash, 2011; Goni, 2011). This points not only to the importance of historical and linguistic ties in the migration process, but also to a shift in global economic power relations – the ‘West’ is no longer the economic epicentre of the world. At the same time, movements from Southern Europe to Northern Europe have increased too. A growing number of Greek and Spanish graduates are moving to countries such as Germany that have weathered the economic crisis rather well (Klasen, 2011; Seifert, 2012; Vogel, 2012).They are not the first Southern Europeans heading north. However, unlike their predecessors of the 1950s and 1960s, young, mobile Spaniards or Greeks do not only have free movement rights but are also better-educated. Whereas during past labour migrations many ‘guest workers’ were employed in less-skilled manufacturing jobs, nowadays there is a particular demand for skilled labour. Thus, the current crisis may trigger a new wave of labour mobility in Europe, with young graduates likely to be at the forefront. So far, the numbers of young Southern Europeans heading north is still comparatively low, with a few tens of thousands having made the move to Germany. These migrant flows might further increase in the future but it is unlikely that they will ever reach the scale of Polish mass migration to Ireland post-2004. Not only did the latter migration occur in the context of an unprecedented economic boom, but it was also facilitated by the institutions of a liberal market economy: relatively flexible employment relations and above all a ‘buy not make’ orientation amongst employers. In turn, in countries such as Germany the main educational and vocational training institutions of a coordinated market economy mitigate against such an external strategy as firms cannot utilise new labour with the facility that Irish employers did ten years ago. As for the future of intra-European mobility, some hurdles remain, most noticeably language. Further obstacles include different tax regimes,

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(non-) recognition of professional qualifications and the difficulty in the transfer of welfare benefits, in particular pensions (The Economist, 2012). Some progress has been made on these issues as the European Commission has promoted a number of ‘pro-mobility policies’ (Recchi, 2008), most recently with an initiative for a ‘European Professional Card’. Ultimately, a European labour market is likely to require more coordination of employment and social policies at the EU-level. The Polish–Irish migration experience post-2004 was exceptional in terms of the scale of the movements. However, it might still serve as a laboratory for future mobility trends in Europe. Arguably, Polish migrants are part of a new generation of mobile Europeans. In fact, their day-today lived experiences are a powerful reminder of an ongoing process of ‘Europeanisation from below’.

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Appendices

Appendix 1: List of interviewed Irish firms and recruitment agencies (2008–2009) Sector Construction Construction Construction Construction Construction Construction Construction Construction Construction Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Hospitality Finance Finance Finance Finance

Interviewee HR Manager 1 HR Manager 2 HR Director Industrial Relations Manager Director 1 Director 2 HR Generalist Operations Manager Director HR Director 1 HR Director 2 HR Manager Learning Manager Recruitment Manager Assistant Manager 1 Assistant Manager 2 Area Manager Operations Manager Managing Director Leaseholder Head of HR 1 Head of HR 2 Head of HR 3 Head of Branches

Business General Contractor General Contractor General Contractor General Contractor General Contractor Architect Subcontractor Recruitment Agency Recruitment Agency Hotel Chain Restaurant Chain Hotel Hotel Catering Company Restaurant Restaurant Restaurant Chain Coffee Chain Recruitment Agency Coffee Shop Retail Bank Global Investment Bank Global Investment Bank Retail Bank

Staff 570 (370) 200 400 800 36 30 1,300 (750) 630 1,500 160 3,500 290 370 5,200 52 33 400 170 75 5 750 500 600 11,000 (continued)

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Appendix 1 (Continued) Sector Finance Finance Finance Finance Finance Finance IT IT IT IT IT IT IT IT IT IT

Interviewee Former Recruitment Manager HR Officer Recruitment Manager Recruitment Consultant 1 Recruitment Consultant 2 Manager HR Manager 1 HR Manager 2 HR Manager 3 HR Manager 4 Director of Engineering Recruitment Manager Recruitment Consultant HR Administrator Head of ICT Recruitment Consultant

Business

Staff

Retail Bank

5,200

Global Investment Bank Global Investment Bank Recruitment Agency

180 2,000 NA

Recruitment Agency

28

Recruitment Agency Multinational Company Irish Company Irish Company Irish Company Multinational Company

NA 1,700 100 190 51 150

Multinational Company Multinational Company

1,700 1,200

Irish Company Recruitment Agency Recruitment Agency

180 NA NA

Workplaces have been revisited in 2010.

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Appendix 2: List of interviewed stakeholders Social partners IBEC ICT Ireland Irish Software Association Construction Industry Federation Irish Bank Officials Association Irish Hotels Federation SIPTU SIPTU ICTU Irish NGOs Crosscare Migrant Project Migrant Rights Centre Ireland Crosscare Migrant Project Polish organisations Polski Express Ireland Poland Business Association Irish–Polish Society Irish–Polish Society Polish Cultural and Social Organisation Social and Legal Centre Polish Embassy Polish Church

11_Krings_Appendices.indd 145

Interviewee Director of Social and Education Policy Director Executive Research and Policy Officer Industrial Relations Officer/ Organiser Executive Branch Organiser Construction Branch Organiser Hospitality Legal and Social Affairs Officer Interviewee

Date of interview 20/08/2008 11/09/2008 18/09/2008 06/10/2008 03/11/2008 03/12/2008 23/04/2009 24/09/2009 11/02/2010 Date of interview

Policy Officer Policy Support Worker

20/10/2009 30/10/2009

Policy Officer

23/11/2009

Interviewee Co-founder of Polski Express Head of Operations Irish Retail Bank Board of Management Founder of the Irish–Polish Society Management Committee Advisor Polish Ambassador to Ireland Head of Polish Church in Ireland

Date of interview 15/01/2010 20/01/2010 20/01/2010 26/01/2010 26/01/2010 28/01/2010 09/02/2010 01/03/2010

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Natalia Architect Miroslaw Chef/Floor Supervisor Iza Hotel Waitress Olga Hotel Waitress

Dorota

Maciek Pawel

Civil Engineer Unemployed (prev. Engineer) Estimator

Unemployed (prev. Labourer) Metal Fixer Architect

Marek

Wiktor Oskar

Painter

Wave 1

Bogdan

Name

Return to Poland

Architect Chef/Floor Supervisor Hotel Waitress

Estimator

Waitress in the UK

Estimator/ student part-time Architect Chef/Floor Supervisor Hotel Waitress

Civil Engineer Civil Engineer Bicycle Courier Made redundant return to Poland Estimator/student part-time Architect Chef/Floor Supervisor Hotel Chambermaid Waitress in North America

Civil Engineer Unemployed

Metal Fixer Architect

Family Business in Poland

Family Business in Poland

Family Business in Poland Metal Fixer Architect Metal Fixer Architect

Painter

Wave 4

Painter

Wave 3

Painter

Wave 2

Made redundant Chef/Floor Supervisor Work Holiday in Latin America Waitress in North America

Made redundant

Metal Fixer Project Manager (new company) Made redundant Site Manager in Poland

Family Business in Poland Family Business in Poland

Wave 5

Wave 6

Unemployed Chef/Floor Supervisor Hotel Chambermaid Waitress in North America

Unemployed

Unemployed Engineer in Poland (new company)

Metal Fixer Project Manager

Family Business in Poland Family Business in Poland

Appendix 3: Job positions of participants throughout the six interview waves (2008–2010)

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Catering Assistant Hotel Receptionist Duty Manager (hotel) Fund Accountant

Portfolio Manager Bank Cashier

Bank Cashier

Financial Advisor IT Analyst

IT Systems Analyst IT Technical Support

Barbara

Filip

Maria

Anita

Karol

Kamil

Magda

Rafal

Ula

Adam

Ewa

Wave 1

Name

Junior Service Manager Duty Manager (new hotel) Financial Analyst

Catering Assistant

Wave 3

Financial Advisor Medical Professional IT Systems Analyst IT Technical Support IT Technical Support

Medical Professional IT Systems Analyst

Financial Advisor

Financial Analyst (new company) Portfolio Portfolio Manager Manager Bank Cashier Floor Supervisor (Retail, new job) Bank Cashier Made redundant

Catering Assistant Supervisor at Reception Duty Manager

Wave 2

Wave 5

Wave 6

Front Office Manager Financial Analyst

Front Office Manager Financial Analyst

Hotel Receptionist Hotel Receptionist

Medical Professional IT Systems Analyst IT Technical Support

Medical Professional Made redundant/ Move to France IT Technical Support

Medical Professional IT Support (new job in France) IT Technical Support

Portfolio Manager Portfolio Manager Entrepreneur in Poland Floor Supervisor Floor Supervisor Floor Supervisor Office Clerk (new Office Clerk Office Clerk company) Financial Advisor Financial Advisor Financial Advisor

Hotel Receptionist (new hotel) Front Office Manager Financial Analyst

Catering Assistant Catering Assistant Catering Assistant

Wave 4

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Index

aesthetic labour 72 air travel 13–14, 42–43, 56n.6, 111–115 biographical approach 25–26, 33, 138–139 boundaryless career 18–20, 95–110 career across organisations 95–100 networks 19, 106–107 transnational career 100–103

standards 46–47, 50–51, 57n.13 see also recruitment ethnic segmentation 85–89 European mobility space 11–13, 140–142 European Union citizenship 11, 126–128 enlargement 38–42, 65–66 welfare rights 12, 128, 134 Financial Services 61, 69, 73–75, 84 firms see employer free movement regime see European mobility space free movers 10–11, 20, 60, 82, 96, 102, 137

construction 37, 48, 62–64, 72, 74, 87 subcontracting 67–68, 79–81 coordinated market economy 17, 141 creative class 21, 29 crisis 51–52 migrants 52–55, 104, 128–134, 140–141 working conditions 89–93

Germany 9, 23n.3, 141 global city see creative class goldrush labour market 36–40, 60–71 Greece 141

discrimination 89, 94n.5

hospitality 64, 66–67, 71–72, 78–79

East–West migration 9–10 see also new member states migration employer 16–17, 65–75, 91–92 employer organisations 42 employment agencies 61, 70 casual 77–83 migration and 15–17

information and communication technologies 14, 61, 69–70, 73–75, 84, 115–121 Irish emigration 140–141 Irish Ferries 49 Irish immigration policy 41

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liberal market economy 17, 19, 40, 47–48, 141

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INDEX

middling migrants 61, 71, 97 migrant networks 14, 55, 60, 63, 66–67, 137 migration guest worker 9, 15–16 lifestyle 21–22, 98–99, 107, 110 motives 20–22, 58–59 self-development 126 skilled 17, 27–29, 61–62, 69–70, 83–85, 96–102, 107–108, 123–124 temporary 7–10, 13–14, 43–44 see also new member states migration mobility migration and 7–8 recession 128–134 technologies of 13–15, 111–122 travel 113–115 national hierarchies 88–89 new member states migration 12, 21–22, 39–46, 52, 54–55 open labour market see European Union: enlargement Poland 41–43 Portugal 141

13_Krings_Index.indd 161

161

qualitative longitudinal research 24–26 Qualitative Panel Study 27–34, 138–139 recession see crisis recruitment 60–75 employer strategies 65–75 ‘good attitude’ 71–73 informal 61–64, 66–67 re-regulation see employment: standards social partnership 48–49 social relations (work) 85–89, 91 Spain 56n.2, 141 Sweden 12, 42 trade unions 18, 48–51, 80–81 transnational lives 13–14, 111–122 United Kingdom 23n.1, 12, 15, 17, 38, 42, 44–45, 48, 57n.9 work see employment worklife pathways 20–22, 26–27, 100–103, 123–135 workplace culture 82–85, 87 workplace studies 34

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