1 Introduction – Setting the Scene

In Europe today, EU citizens are free to move within the entire EU and may take up jobs, enter universities, enjoy retirement or try their luck wherever they want to. As many scholars have pointed out (Favell 2008, 2009; Ciupijus 2011; Castro-Martin and Cortina 2015) this complete freedom of movement marks a turning point in European history, and the predominant direction of movement is currently from East to West. Post-accession migration from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) thus brings back old European migration patterns, in which CEE migrants are making use of this still quite new freedom of movement. So, being mobile as such is simple and easy without any legal constraints whatsoever, as nowadays even more sceptic EU 15 countries like Austria and Germany have abolished most of the transitional provisions regulating access to their labour markets. One might exaggerate and say that the official term “mobility” implies that internal EU migrants never really arrive anywhere, but are rather floating freely through the EU, which of course is a completely inaccurate picture. With the national level becoming less important in the present setting, having been “taken out of the equation”, CEE migrants are arriving at and settling within varying periods of time in cities and urban regions, which are still the most important destinations, though rural areas, e.g. in Southern Europe, are also becoming more attractive destinations (see Caglar 2014). Still, CEE migration to Western Europe is to a large extent an urban issue.

From the EU’s point of view, free intra-European movement between Central-Eastern and Western Europe is praised as a win-win-win situation with gains for Western economies, higher wages for migrants and returning capital and talent for Eastern economies (Favell 2008: 705). But it is clearly necessary to look at this phenomenon from a more nuanced perspective (1) in terms of potential barriers in different fields CEE migrants may face in their new destinations and (2) in terms of different groups of CEE migrants and their access to local resources. This will make it possible to overcome the rather one-dimensional view on an in fact rather heterogeneous group of people.

This chapter is going to explore the accessibility of CEE migrants to the labour market, housing, the welfare system, the school system and society as such. The previous chapters outline a definition as well as the actual presence of different groups of CEE migrants in urban regions in Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden. We will be looking at groups of migrants who are present on the labour market, both formally and informally employed (knowledge workers, entrepreneurs, manual workers, persons working in private households, sex workers), and at groups whose primary purpose of staying abroad is not work-related (students, partners or spouses, children as well as beggars and homeless persons).

This chapter presents both the obverse and the reverse side of free movement by looking at the pathways of these different types of CEE migrants into various domains and their access to local resources in six target urban regions based on qualitative empirical data. Details on methodology and the stakeholder-based approach can be found in Chap. 1. The question is, whether the access to and provision of local resources – which in the present context is understood as functional integration – runs as easily and seemingly smoothly as the freedom of movement promoted by the EU indicates. How are CEE migrants impacted by free movement in terms of inclusion and exclusion in central domains, and do migrant groups differ in this respect? If yes, in what way? This chapter provides a multidimensional synthesis pertaining to patterns of consequences for different types of CEE migrants based on assessments from key stakeholders across six urban regions in Austria, the Netherlands and Sweden. Implications of CEE migration in the Turkish urban regions of Istanbul and Edirne are analysed in Chap. 11. Nevertheless, references will be made as to a comparison between urban regions within and outside the EU.

2 State of the Art: Studies on CEE Migration

During the past 25 years, the vast body of literature on the renewed European East-West migration has oftentimes focussed on analysing stocks and flows, on migration patterns, contributions to and advancements in migration theory, on labour migration and on facets of integration (in different fields like the labour market or housing). In geographical terms this has mostly been done for (a) single sending countries, with Poland being the most important as well as the most investigated country, and (b) single receiving countries, regions or cities (e.g. in the UK and in Germany). With the aforementioned paradigm shift in the legal-political framework and the emergence of free movement, scientific interest has moved on to post-accession migration and its particularities (Black et al. 2010; Glorius et al. 2013). It is still concentrating on distinct types and patterns of EU-internal East-West movement but is also addressing issues of functional integration in the receiving regions such as labour market segmentation, inclusion, exclusion, and de-qualification. There is a growing awareness among migration scholars that even though European ‘mobile citizens’ nowadays basically have the same rights as citizens of the receiving EU countries, they still may face pronounced barriers and experience “integration needs” (Collett 2013) similar to those of migrants from outside of the EU, usually on the local level of regions and cities. Furthermore, the national frameworks in the receiving member states may still determine registration requirements, for example, which are connected to accessing the welfare system or the labour market in those countries that implemented transitional provisions.

While in-depth analyses of implications related to lacking language skills and subsequent difficulties in finding proper information by accessing local resources are rarely available, issues concerning the labour market situation of CEE migrants have remained in the centre of scientific attention (e.g. Drinkwater et al. 2010; Ciupijus 2011). In this context, de-qualification is one of the key aspects that has already been analysed from various perspectives since the re-emergence of European East-West migration in the wake of the fall of the Iron Curtain more than 25 years ago (Fassmann et al. 2014). Compared to other immigrant groups like guest workers in the 1960s and 1970s, CEE migrants display an above-average level of education which they oftentimes cannot translate into corresponding positions in the receiving labour market. To give an example from Austria: According to the Labour Force Survey (Statistics Austria 2015), the share of university graduates in the Austrian born population aged 15–64 was 15 per cent in 2014 compared to 23 per cent for CEE migrants.

Apart from the analysis of factors that explain the ongoing de-qualification of CEE workers, it has been shown that precarious work associated with downward occupational mobility is the price CEE migrants are willing to pay to gain higher wages in the “West” (Voitchovsky 2014). For Romanians and Bulgarians, who were shut out from some Western national labour markets for a longer period of time, bogus self-employment was an important pathway into these labour markets and often resulted in an even more pronounced precariousness combined with wage competition (Ciupijus 2011: 546). Being known, described and used as “hard workers” hinders CEE migrants from social participation and language learning, as described in the British context (MacKenzie and Forde 2009): “certain workplaces, particularly those embodying classical features of secondary labour market jobs, do not facilitate overcoming social and cultural exclusion”, which might be passed on to the children of CEE migrants, as many temporary migration projects become more permanent (Ciupijus 2011: 546).

Though scholars are increasingly aware of the fact that CEE migrants are a very heterogeneous group, many recent studies still focus on migrant workers in danger of facing rather unfavourable conditions. Still, some scholars have looked into distinct groups of mobile CEE citizens. Favell (2009), to give an example, has elaborated on elite professional movers whom he calls “Eurostars” in “Eurocities”, a predominantly urban hub phenomenon, where “an invisible migration of West Europeans has laid path now for young, talented and educated Poles, Hungarians, Romanians and others heading in the same direction” (ibid: 178 f.). Comparing their situation in London, Amsterdam and Brussels, Favell sees mobile EU elite professionals in general as blocked to some extent. Even though the official barriers inhibiting their movement have been abolished completely, they still face serious long-term consequences of social isolation and local as well as national barriers (e.g. in housing) related to language and the “the internal secrets of a national ‘culture’ reserved to native speakers” (ibid: 180). Turning from these successful CEE migrants to those finding themselves in a destitute position, Garapich (2014) looks at street homeless in London among migrants from Poland and distinguishes between two types: The first one comprises persons who fled from a troubled history in some way (unemployment, homelessness and substance abuse in the country of origin), while the second one “is composed of people, who have descended into poverty and subsequent substance abuse after migrating to Britain”. The latter type is linked to structural features like their weak position in the labour market and their subsequent loss of housing in the tight and expensive London housing market. Garapich found that “structurally rejected people ... form strong ties despite (or because of) a hostile exclusionary and hegemonic social environment of the neoliberal order” (ibid.).

Other bodies of literature look at different domains of functional integration rather than at distinct groups of CEE migrants. Concerning the situation on the housing market, Ciupijus (2011: 542) points out that although they nominally have the right to access social housing in Britain, the general scarcity in this housing segment “left many mobile CEEs (most of them employed in poorly paid, secondary labour market jobs) with the unattractive option of expensive private accommodation”. The question of whether this concentration in a certain segment of the housing market leads to residential segregation has been addressed by Sabater (2015), who has shown that in the UK EU ‘mobile’ citizens from Poland – in comparison to those from Spain, Italy and Portugal – are overrepresented in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

3 Empirical Results: Implications of CEE Migration in Selected Urban Regions

3.1 Preliminary Remarks: Urban Regions and the Notion of Space

The main focus of this chapter is the analysis of the consequences of intra-European movement for various types of CEE migrants in European urban regions. These consequences are by and large related to the labour market, housing, the welfare system, the school system, and societal participation. Generally speaking, there are two different angles from which the implications can be looked at: that of the individual migrants and that of the cities and urban regions. To give an example: Children from CEE in schools may have difficulties following the lessons due to lacking language skills, which is a problem on the individual level. From the urban regions’ point of view, the presence of migrant children in schools may lead to changing needs and focuses and thus represent a cause for action, which in turn has urban consequences. Both kinds of implications are to some extent interlinked but they can be clearly distinguished. This contribution focuses on the individual perspective, which the experts have frequently elaborated on, with eventual side glances at the urban perspective.

From the perspective of European receiving cities, CEE migration adds to the ever-growing migration-related diversity that urban regions across Europe have been facing during the past decades. This fact changes and challenges cities and their subsystems. Cities cannot steer immigration as such, as this is dealt with on the national level and in the case of intra-European movement on the European level, but they are the places where migrants actually arrive and where integration needs and challenges become visible. The urban regions that are going to be explored include two capital cities (Stockholm and Vienna) that are at the same time the largest cities in the respective countries, the second and third largest cities of the Netherlands, Rotterdam and The Hague, and two smaller urban regions in Sweden and Austria (Gothenburg and Linz). Generally speaking, the urban regions concerned vary significantly in size but display a common main feature, namely a considerable inflow of CEE migrants over the past decade, and even earlier, to both the core cities and the surrounding areas. The latter areas also attract CEE migrants because housing might be cheaper, the city is still easily accessible, and because rural areas offer employment opportunities (e.g. in agriculture). We expect distinctive implications in the core cities with a larger experience of immigration and a more differentiated labour market compared to the surrounding municipalities, where (CEE) migration may not be that “common” and where migrant labour is often concentrated in one specific sector.

A central discriminating factor between the urban regions that shapes both the extent and the variation of types of migration and subsequently – such is the assumption – of the implications is that of spatial proximity. While Sweden and the Netherlands do not share any common borders with one of the CEE sending countries, Austria directly neighbours on four CEE countries, which literally surround its entire eastern part and with which it shares a long common history, not only regarding migration. A similar situation can be found the Edirne urban region (see Chap. 12). Short-term mobility is thus much more likely in this central European area because the related risks and costs for the migrants are comparably low. For CEE migrants from neighbouring countries, Austria is a kind of lab “for trying out” migration or simply for working “abroad” and living at home (e.g. daily commuting). This makes a huge difference to the other destinations in Sweden and the Netherlands, where larger distances have to be overcome and where the related risks and costs are higher. So there are two facets of the notion of “space” that have to be taken into account, namely (1) the factual distance between origin and destination and (2) spatial variations in labour market structures and job opportunities within the receiving urban regions.

3.2 Relevance of Different Types of CEE Migration in European Urban Regions

Before actually starting to answer the core research question, one needs to know, whether and to what extent the different types of CEE migrants defined in the present context are relevant for the stakeholders’ work in the six urban regions. Results from the online survey that aimed at gathering first insights into relevant themes show the following: All groups have been mentioned as relevant by the local stakeholders across all urban regions (see Fig. 3.1), which is not surprising because the groups were pre-defined based on the assessment and analysis during the mapping exercise (see Chaps. 1 and 2).

Fig. 3.1
figure 1

Relevance of eight types of CEE migration for the stakeholders’ work in six urban regions (Source: IMAGINATION online survey 2014. N = 113. Note: In each city individually, stakeholders were asked about the relevance of the different groups in their work)

Full size image

A closer look reveals both similarities and differences between (1) groups of CEE migrants and (2) urban regions. The relevance of a specific group in the stakeholders’ work furthermore provides a preliminary indication as to the urban consequences felt in specific contexts. As a majority, manual workers occupy much of the stakeholders’ engagement; they are the most important group in all urban regions except for Gothenburg. In Linz, Rotterdam and The Hague this goes hand in hand with a pronounced relevance of accompanying family members, which is discussed in terms of housing and consequences for the school system. Knowledge workers and entrepreneurs have been particularly relevant in Vienna and Rotterdam, though with varying urban consequences: While knowledge workers are mostly associated with positive outcomes for the urban regions, entrepreneurs may find themselves in difficult situations and may display detrimental outcomes for the urban labour market, as will be described later. Interestingly enough, only Austrian stakeholders are also dealing with consequences of CEE workers in private households, which is probably due to spatial proximity and the presence of commuting care workers. Beggars and homeless persons, who receive a lot of media attention and are often in the focus of discussions of intra-European movement as such throughout Western Europe, were mostly mentioned by Swedish and Dutch respondents. More importantly, and this was revealed later during the expert interviews and the focus groups, there are enormous differences in the stakeholders’ perceptions and narratives as to who is “really important” in the respective urban setting, which leads to varying urban consequences that were raised. In the Netherlands, stakeholders were mostly concerned with temporary manual workers having a low socio-economic status and tended to neglect the fact that some CEE migrants stay for longer periods of time or even for good, while Swedish stakeholders were more concerned with beggars and homeless persons.

In Austria, given the specificity of spatial proximity, both temporary and permanent forms of CEE migration were discussed. Another divergence in the stakeholders’ assessments pertains to the definition of the “urban region”. While Austrian and Swedish experts did not elaborate on the big picture and oftentimes discussed only the spatial entity they were concretely working in, Dutch stakeholders often discussed rural surroundings, where – and this is the link – most temporary workers find jobs in horticulture. This needs to be mentioned as a limitation to the data as it has probably resulted in a bias.

4 Consequences for Different Types of CEE Migrants

In the following, a basic distinction will be made between labour migrants and those not economically active in the receiving urban regions. Further refinements as to the various types of CEE migration will then be displayed throughout the discussion of the results. Implications will be presented for the position on the labour market, the fields of housing and the local level of the neighbourhood, registration and social security, social participation, and the school system. Furthermore, we will take a closer look at potential interconnections between implications in these domains.

4.1 The Situation of Economically Active CEE Migrants: A Question of Legal Status

Though the freedom of movement has led to a pronounced diversification of types of CEE migration, taking up a job in order to escape unemployment, hoping for higher wages or broadening one’s experience still are the predominant reasons to go abroad. Within the group of labour migrants, there are short-term and long-term forms including eventual fluent transitions that mainly depend on the success and prospects on the receiving labour market. Another distinctive feature shaping the trajectories in the receiving urban region is the legal status on the labour market ranging from informal to formal to mixed forms, as some CEE migrants hold both a formal and an informal job.

Next, the individuals’ level of qualification has to be taken into account: It has oftentimes been proven that a large share of CEE migrants is highly qualified, with knowledge workers per definition being the only group able to translate their qualifications into adequate positions on the receiving labour market. Their presence has mainly been assessed as positive for urban regions – in terms of economic gains and filling gaps on the labour market, a fact that also holds true for Edirne in Turkey (see Chap. 12) – and for individual migrants in terms of broadening their experience and gaining higher wages. Compared to the other groups, knowledge workers have rarely been mentioned by the stakeholders across urban regions and thus appear to be “invisible” because they are capable of navigating the different parts of the system easily. Being formally employed translates into an unproblematic registration, and the related access to welfare benefits works somewhat automatically. Due to comparatively high salaries, their access to decent housing merely depends on the general availability of flats, which appears to be difficult in the urban regions in Sweden and Austria (most of all in the capital cities), where the overall situation on the housing market is rather tight. Nevertheless, many find housing in better-off neighbourhoods where they – again – remain invisible. For them, even the contested field of language competence is not seen as particularly relevant from the point of view of the stakeholders because their English is oftentimes sufficient, at least in the workplace. Concerning this group, the stakeholders were mainly concerned about their need for better information regarding rules and regulations in the different fields and also regarding the transfer of welfare benefits once they decide to move to another country or return to their country of origin.

Continuing with the individuals’ level of qualification, a central issue potentially applying to all other CEE migrant groups on the labour market irrespective of their length of stay and to some extent interlinked with their legal status is de-qualification, which is defined as a mismatch between the qualification “brought along” and the skill level acquired in the job at the destination. Since CEE migrants are oftentimes very qualified, the risk of doing de-qualifying work is high. A lack of information about the recognition of qualifications, weak networks and insufficient language skills are decisive reasons for this risk. Stakeholders have discussed this issue from extremely different perspectives, with the national specificities playing a more important role than differences between urban regions in the same country. It is a top-priority for Austrian stakeholders, who consider it a negative consequence for many CEE migrants that is closely connected to complex regulations concerning the nostrification of qualifications and lacking language skills. Not mentioned at all by Swedish stakeholders, the issue was discussed in the Netherlands from an entirely different perspective: CEE migrants may actually do de-qualified work but at the same time they qualify themselves in terms of tacit skills, international perspective and portfolio-building, a line of argumentation that once more proves the dominance of the “temporary view” in the Dutch context.

In order to understand the situation of CEE entrepreneurs in the urban regions one has to keep in mind that the majority of them chose self-employment (1) as a strategy to enter the labour market as long as the transitional provisions in Austria and the Netherlands were applied, with Sweden refraining from this post-accession strategy to protect the labour market, and (2) as a strategy to be employed in a sector where gainful employment is not feasible. From the point of view of the stakeholders in the Dutch and Austrian urban regions, this resulted in high numbers of self-employed CEE citizens, many of whom are still marginalised one-person companies facing unfavourable situations in many respects, even though the transitional restrictions have been lifted. Thus, self-employed work is often linked to wage dumping, exploitation and de-qualification. Beyond that, some CEE migrants are essentially pushed into self-employment (concentrated in some branches like construction, care work, and taxi driving), an issue linked to an even higher risk of (self-)exploitation and less secure working conditions. Local employers in this way reduce personnel costs and avoid administrative burdens aggravating both short- and long-term gainful employment. Blurred lines between self-employment and informal work may reduce the claims regarding welfare benefits. Furthermore, the low socio-economic status of these entrepreneurs decreases their chances on the housing market, and long working hours are detrimental to language learning and societal participation as such.

Many of these CEE entrepreneurs are in fact manual workers, a group that obviously displays various strategies as to length of stay and legal status on the regional labour markets, which in turn results in different trajectories of inclusion and exclusion in the central domains. In the Netherlands, stakeholders have addressed this group mainly in terms of short-term gainfully employed manual workers subject to clustered contractual relationships. In this context, temporary employment agencies act as gatekeepers. They are very much interested in managing and controlling these migrants in terms of wages and regarding security issues but also regarding travel costs and housing. These short-term workers are hired on the basis of all-inclusive package deals and are mostly employed in the rural surroundings of the cities, which display a more monocultural economic profile. Migrants may profit from the conditional services that the agencies and employers offer as they do not have to take care of housing and transport. However, the issue becomes negative, when their autonomy and private behaviour are dictated by labour conditions (compare van Ostaijen et al. 2015). All-inclusive package deals are likely to result in multiple dependencies, which can imply that employees are in a vulnerable position towards their employers. Discrimination or intimidation could cause employees to feel unable to speak up about their rights and labour situation or feel afraid to empower themselves. Further consequences include wage discrimination, labour discrimination and intimidation by fines for breaching rules set out for housing behaviour as well as by threatening to terminate labour contracts if employees speak up about improper labour conditions. For Sweden and Austria, this sort of all-encompassing relationship between employers and employees in short-term agricultural work has only been marginally touched upon.

Though identified as an important part of CEE migration, the type “persons working in private households” has not been elaborated on much by Dutch and Swedish stakeholders, while Austrian and Turkish stakeholders have put a lot of emphasis on it (for details on Turkey see Chap. 12 and Sert et al. 2015). Usually involving women, the ever-growing demand for care work and domestic work in mostly middle-class households has attracted a growing number of persons, thus contributing to the ongoing feminisation of CEE migration. In this field, two major types have been discussed by the experts: (1) care workers who go back and forth on a bi-weekly basis, by and large only feasible in the Austrian urban regions as they are spatially close enough to CEE for this kind of strategy (compare Enengel and Reeger 2015), and (2) women in informal cleaning jobs as well as males engaging in gardening and renovation work in private households, also mostly in an informal way and scrutinized in all urban regions. Care workers constantly commute between their life at home and a household in Austria, where they take care of sick and elderly persons 24/7. Although there are many positive stories to be told including benefits for both the women (in terms of higher wages) and the persons being cared for (as they can stay at home in their familiar surroundings), some care workers may find themselves in situations where various detrimental factors coincide: Living with their employers may result in a pronounced dependence with eventual cases of exploitation when they are asked to carry out domestic work not in their remit and furthermore keep them away from a broader societal participation. According to the stakeholders, this group is hard to reach and kind of hidden in the private households. Nevertheless, most of this work is carried out in a formal way (mostly self-employed, rarely employed by an agency or the household itself), with full access to welfare benefits, though the transfer of claims is still often unclear. The second group comprises all other forms of domestic help, carried out mainly by CEE citizens already residing in the urban regions who sometimes engage both in an official, formal job and in informal domestic work to earn some extra money. These kinds of services are in high demand with “these ambitious ‘new Europeans’ being in danger of becoming a new Victorian servant class” (Favell 2008: 711). In the following, a closer look will be taken at the general implications of informal work regarding the domestic sector as well as other parts of the economy.

Generally speaking, informal workers (in construction, the service sector, private households) are in a very vulnerable position as these kinds of work arrangements are often associated with exploitation and a pronounced dependence on the employer. This assessment also holds true e.g. for informal work in Istanbul (see Chap. 12). Yet, these types of jobs still seem to offer an alternative way to earn money for those who are not able to find or are kept away from a formal job. But on the labour market they are affected by de-qualification, competition and eventual displacement, e.g. due to an even cheaper labour force from more Eastern parts of CEE, wage-related discrimination, a complete lack of labour rights, poor working conditions and long working hours. Beyond these effects regarding the labour market, informal work results in a spiral of negative interrelated effects in terms of inclusion, or rather exclusion, regarding other resources: a weak position on the housing market with few choices, no access to welfare benefits (including accident insurance), social marginalisation due to long working hours, and limited chances to learn the language.

The situation of CEE sex workers is again characterized by a spiral of effects mostly depending on their status in terms of formal and informal work and also as to whether sex work is prohibited in the respective urban setting or not. Sex work in areas where it is officially forbidden is driven underground or online, sometimes related to human trafficking, and reinforces the exploitative structure of this activity. Due to the stigmatised position, access to housing may be difficult, as can be access to social benefits, which in turn leads to general marginalisation and hardly any societal participation.

4.2 The Situation of Family Members: Depending on the Single Earner

Though the majority of CEE migrants enter Western European urban regions in order to find an employment, there are also groups not primarily pursuing economic goals. Accompanying partners and spouses who are themselves not (officially) participating in the labour market have as such not been discussed much in terms of consequences by the experts. Their situation largely depends on the socio-economic position of their partner, which may leave them either in a weak position if their partner is part of the informal labour market or in a satisfactory situation if their partner has a well-paying, formal job. Access to social benefits also depends on this, since family members are able to apply for financial aid and benefits only if their partner is formally employed. For the Austrian case, stakeholders elaborated that access to the labour market is particularly difficult for this group because they face childcare duties that are often difficult to combine with a job. Consequently, this non-participation in the labour market has wide-ranging consequences for them, their children and also for the economically active partner, who may have to work longer and harder in order to provide for the family. Non-working spouses and partners have more difficulties learning the language as they lack social contacts because their childcare duties hinder them from spending time attending language training.

Across all urban regions family reunification is an ongoing process which clearly affects the schools in the receiving areas and puts attention on the role of CEE children in families and the education system. Schools face challenges resulting from the notion of “mobile EU-citizens”. In the Netherlands, the assessment once again concentrates on the temporality of stays and on children entering and leaving schools frequently. Furthermore, a lack of knowledge about regulations regarding the school age has been addressed as has the situation that parents simply leave their children at home instead of sending them to school because they are more inclined to take care of them in the family.

Spatial proximity once more shapes the assessments in the Austrian urban regions: Recently, some CEE children and teenagers have been heading to Austria to attend compulsory or vocational schools in the border region while still residing in their country of origin or attending boarding schools. CEE pupils therefore lead to changing needs and focuses at school, which has been particularly underlined in the case of the fast-growing urban region of Vienna. CEE citizens acknowledge the positive effects of sending their children to Austrian schools in terms of a later entry into the Austrian labour market. On the other hand, the more peripheral schools benefit from additional pupils and do not run the risk of being closed down.

In terms of education-related implications the Austrian example shows the need for a differentiation between two groups of CEE pupils: Children who migrate in early childhood usually integrate very quickly and more easily into the education system as they learn the language at kindergarten and school in a “hands on” fashion. Older newcomers (such as teenagers) accompanying their parents face more difficulties in following the lessons due to insufficient German language proficiencies and diverging curricula. This problem is aggravated by the fact that most measures are implemented within compulsory education but would also be necessary in vocational schools where school attendance is no longer compulsory. Moreover, academic high schools do not offer substantial supporting measures and it is therefore often recommended that these newcomers attend ordinary schools. Many of them have little or no knowledge of German and are therefore particularly challenging to include into the education system. These problems discourage many teenaged newcomers from attending vocational schools, which leads to a subsequent loss of individual future opportunities and human capital.

The Swedish results do not offer any indication that CEE migration has major implications for the education sector. Education for the younger CEE citizens, i.e. under the age of 18, seems to work well. This can result from the fact that, e.g., Gothenburg has an established practice of offering schooling to the children of rejected asylum seekers, and the public administration representatives were almost puzzled by the respective question. CEE pupils are not considered a problematic group, maybe partly due to the rather permanent presence of CEE citizens in the region. Children accompanying homeless CEE citizens are welcome to attend primary and secondary schools and this process seems to work well.

4.3 The Situation of Students: Rarely Discussed by the Experts

Just like in the case of knowledge workers, stakeholders did not elaborate much on students from CEE, who have been assessed as a rather positive facet of intra-European movement. With many of them being embedded in European schemes like ERASMUS and being present on a temporary basis, they are seen as an enrichment of urban society and the university scene. Nevertheless, they also may face problems, e.g., on the housing market, where many find themselves in a disadvantaged position lacking relevant social connections and information on how the system works and how to navigate bureaucratic formalities. The latter also applies to finding adequate jobs alongside their studies, and CEE students run the risk of taking on informal work and being faced with the related disadvantages like discrimination and exploitation with a similar situation for CEE students in Turkey (see Chap. 12). Language proficiency and the necessity to learn the new language were discussed rather divergently: While Dutch stakeholders argued that students were exempt from having to learn Dutch if their English was sufficient, Swedish and Austrian stakeholders viewed local language proficiency as a necessary requirement to enter the labour market after graduation and also during their studies. In this respect, Austrian stakeholders diagnosed a lack of specialised language courses.

4.4 The Situation of Destitute CEE Migrants: A “Special Challenge”

Though in quantitative terms they make up very small groups, beggars and homeless CEE migrants are in the focus of a lot of public and political discussions in all of the urban regions explored. Basically, there are two different, albeit overlapping, groups which have in common that they are (1) excluded from access to all central dimensions and that they (2) have been assessed as a group facing as well as causing problems and thus represent a challenge for the receiving systems. Beggars, mostly of Roma descent, often lead their own structured lives and do not access night shelters etc. Both groups are concentrated in the core cities, where homeless find shelters and where begging is feasible in shopping streets with many passers-by, for example.

Welfare provision and return counselling remains a constant task in the receiving cities, and the health care system is overburdened with homeless EU citizens lacking health insurance. Stakeholders have elaborated on the lack of supportive facilities for homeless persons including easier and cheaper access to housing. Neighbourhood consequences of CEE migration were also largely associated with beggars and homeless CEE citizens. The visibility of these groups may increase generalised negative attitudes on migration from CEE as such.

The “catch 22” of being a homeless EU-citizen in Western Europe has been described for Sweden (compare Zelano et al. 2015) but this description can be expanded to all urban regions: Without a social security number, they have difficulties opening a bank account and getting formal employment. As they need to earn a living, they are more likely to work in the informal labour market, where there is a lack of transparency and an increased risk of exploitation. Moreover, homelessness and social marginalisation also creates a spiral of effects stretching beyond the obvious ones. In order to be entitled to assistance, the jobseeker must regularly visit the employment agency and account for the efforts made to get a job. Therefore, staying in the job-seeking process requires an address, or at least a reliable contact point, where they can be reached by the agency. Without a way to get in touch with the jobseeker, the employment agency cannot fulfil the controls required, and the jobseeker is excluded from the process. The uncertainty of not having a place to live also hampers the educational attainment of accompanying children. In the worst case, this marginalisation will be inherited by the next generation.

5 The Crucial Interface: Access to Information and Individual Language Skills

There are two comprehensive factors shaping the effects described so far as explanatory variables that need to be discussed in more detail: access to information and individual language skills. Across urban regions and the various types of migration, stakeholders have emphasised a lack of information about specificities of the labour market, the situation regarding housing but also in the fields of registration, social security and education. CEE migrants definitely need more and better information, and the stakeholders suggest a clear need for improving routines and facilitating information flows. First of all, it would benefit the migrants themselves: Easy access to information on registration, on how the social security system works, on the labour and housing market as well as on the school system is necessary to manoeuvre within the receiving society in general. There are several factors that explain why CEE migrants lack proper information, the most important one being a lack of language skills, since oftentimes in-depth information is only available in the local language. Second, information on the specificities of the labour market or regarding social security, for example, has been reported to be contradicting when addressing different institutions and often causes confusion as to which rules actually apply. Third, there is some indication that CEE migrants rely on the information they get from family and friends rather than from official channels, which has been discussed in relation with a generalized avoidance of official authorities. Last but not least, Dutch experts elaborated on a certain interest of some employers to keep temporary workers uninformed, which is a clear sign of discrimination and intimidation (compare van Ostaijen et al. 2015).

However, an increase in information would also benefit the authorities and society at large, since it improves supervision, which in turn minimises the scope for criminal activities such as labour exploitation (compare Zelano et al. 2015). There also seems to be a need for better information before migrants actually decide to move. In the case of the Netherlands and Austria some stakeholders argued that different types of CEE migrants are often not well prepared and may have unrealistic expectations (for example, regarding chances on the labour market or the availability of housing) before actually starting their migration process.

Individual language skills were seen as the second prerequisite to success in every-day-life as well as in the working sphere. Lacking language skills hinder CEE migrants from getting adequate information, with the exception of knowledge workers, for whom English may suffice. However, language acquisition is a matter of length of stay: It may not be worthwhile for short-term migrants like seasonal workers but is seen as absolutely necessary for all migrants staying for a longer period of time or permanently. Not all types of migrants have easy access to language courses or are encouraged to learn the new language in the receiving urban regions. Access to language courses may be a problem in more rural areas in particular, and funding appears to be insufficient in all urban regions. There is also a clear need for more job-related language courses as well as evening courses that meet the needs of working CEE migrants.

6 Conclusion

Taking a comparative look at different types of migrants from CEE revealed enormous differences between them in terms of access to and provision of local resources, the respective trajectories and positions as well as the barriers they are facing. Knowledge workers and students as the least problematized categories are comparatively better off or, in other words, they have rarely been mentioned by the stakeholders and thus seem to be capable of navigating the different parts of the system with comparative ease. In contrast, many manual workers, entrepreneurs and domestic helpers face de-qualification, competition, wage dumping and exploitation with the disadvantages progressively intensifying in informal employment. This furthermore goes hand in hand with a complete lack of social security and, generally speaking, more barriers in accessing all other central domains. Finally, we saw that the most vulnerable groups – beggars and homeless persons – find themselves completely excluded and have been defined by the stakeholders as a “special challenge” for the urban regions. The present approach, offering a more nuanced perspective on intra-European movement, proves that the triple-win scenario promoted by the EU (Favell 2008: 705) does not entirely hold true. Migrants may be among the “winners” in terms of higher wages but the circumstances under which they are working and living in Western European urban regions are oftentimes rather unfavourable.

Furthermore, a detailed look at the implications in various domains for different types of migrants (see also Reeger and Enengel 2015) quickly reveals that these are often interrelated and that each type of migration has its own “chain of implications”. For some types of migrants, these linkages may result in a vicious cycle that is difficult to escape, and many of these have a domino effect of implications that multiply their effects due to their chained patterns.

Some of the stories that have been told by the stakeholders regarding the implications in various domains and their chained patterns obviously also apply to migrants from outside of the EU and not just to mobile EU-citizens enjoying their freedom of movement. This leads to the conclusion that having the same rights as nationals and being treated like them legally does not necessarily result in positive outcomes, as has been shown in previous studies on CEE migration (e.g. Favell 2009; Ciupijus 2011; MacKenzie and Forde 2009; Sabater 2015). Yes, EU citizens are free to live and work wherever they want to but they may still face obstacles and be in need of help and guidance at least at the beginning of their stay, especially in terms of the “crucial interface”: sufficient, pinpoint information, and opportunities to learn the language in case they intend to stay longer. This is where they do not differ from third country nationals. But contrary to them, they are, at least up to now, often not subject to integration policies due to the principle of non-discrimination of EU citizens, which may have some unfortunate effects. As indicated by the experts, they are often not covered by specific integration efforts and programmes and lack financial support on the EU, the national, and the local level.

The stakeholders’ tasks regarding and their engagement with CEE migrants and their narratives concerning consequences for them in the urban regions show a lot of similarities and differences that can be defined and framed along several lines. Some of these variations are related to spatial differences, namely to distance and proximity between origin and destination and the resulting structure and extent of CEE migration. In the Austrian urban regions, which are the closest to the CEE countries, display the highest shares of CEE migrants, offer the most pronounced variety in types of migrants’ projects and share a long common (migration) history, stakeholders drew a nuanced picture of both positive and negative outcomes of intra-European movement for both the individual migrants and the cities and their economies. In Sweden, being further away and experiencing comparatively less CEE immigration, though transitional provisions were not applied, stakeholders also had a differentiated view on various types of CEE migration with the general conclusion being that the vast majority integrates well and contributes to both economy and society, which was also argued by Austrian stakeholders. In the Dutch case, stakeholders elaborated mostly on temporary migrants with a low socio-economic status, thus to some extent neglecting issues regarding long-term migrants, though they are present in both of the Dutch urban regions as well. On this level of comparison it thus became obvious, that urban consequences are to some extent determined by the national level with urban regions in the same country displaying a lot of similarities. There are two further explanations: 1) The national level plays a crucial role in the basic design of governance in the domains explored. The functioning of the labour market, the welfare system and the school system and the rules applied are to a large extent top down with only slight regional and local variations. Matters of the housing market and societal participation on the other hand are more in the area of responsibility of the local level. 2) As shown above, the stakeholder-based approach revealed a kind of “national narrative” when it comes to distinct aspects of CEE migration and its consequences as experts engaged in this field are connected through local and national networks active in various domains and share their views and experiences.

Another notion – again from a spatial perspective – is that differences in consequences occur rather within than between urban regions in the same national context, as was illustrated by Dutch and Austrian stakeholders pointing to the importance of future research on the spatial specificities of CEE migration in urban and rural areas. Cities seem to be better suited to welcoming newcomers and providing them with an adequate infrastructure and diverse offers. On the one hand, they are attractive to all types of CEE migration also regarding existing migrant networks, on the other hand, they appear to be limited to influencing domains like housing and community cohesion. They cannot steer immigration as such, matters of the labour market or registration, which are designed on the national level, nor social security in the broad sense. More rural municipalities on the outskirts of urban regions are often less well prepared and equipped for catering to the needs of mobile EU citizens due to their smaller population size and due to having less experience with immigration.

The present analysis of the obverse and reverse side of free movement proves that there are problem areas to be considered and challenges to be solved when it comes to intra-European movement. These problems and challenges are mostly felt on the local level of urban regions as cities are and will continue to be migration magnets for all migrants irrespective of their origin, among them EU citizens. The ever-growing migration-related diversity puts new socio-political challenges that need to be resolved urgently. For many CEE migrants, transitions into the local fabric work smoothly, as the interviewees argued, but still there is a lot to be done in terms of policy responses. The sheer multitude of negative implications in single domains as well as their interconnectedness leads to the expectation that there are not many structured governance approaches – at least not on the local level of urban regions – to the implications of CEE migration, but rather ad-hoc arrangements and reactions instead of proactive procedures. Chap. 7 will discuss, whether this assumption is correct or whether it can be rejected.