Public-Private Regulation of Labour Migration: A Challenge to Administrative Law Accountability Mechanisms

Abstract

Recent studies on labour migration governance in Europe show that the making of labour migration policy is to a large extent a public-private affair (De Lange, 2007, pp. 409–413; Balch, 2010, pp. 145–147; Caviedes, 2010, pp. 31, 181; Menz and Caviedes, 2010, p. 5; Betts and Cerna, 2011, pp. 61–62; Faure Atgar, 2011, p. 159and, especially with regard to migration control, Gammeltoft-Hansen and Nyberg Sørensen, 2012, pp. 143–145). Private actors such as multinational corporations or local undertakings relying on migrant labour in times of labour shortages are often the initiators of changes in regulation of labour migration. In particular, in sectors with a high need for a flexible work force, labour migration may solve shortages and therefore employers in these sectors engage in lobbying for more lenient labour migration policies (Caviedes, 2010, p. 195). The regulatory instruments that have resulted from such employer lobbying are often hybrid public-private forms of regulation. Although labour migrants are the objects of the policy changes lobbied for, their perspective is neither central in research nor often taken into account during policy debates (De Lange, 2007, p. 413). The creation of new regulation is central to the impressive body of recent literature on labour migration governance. A dimension that is less researched is the situation after the new regulations have been implemented: how is government held accountable when applying these public-private arrangements, especially when it comes to the immigration rights of the migrant workers involved?