How ‘Low-Skilled’ Migrant Workers Are Made: Border-Drawing in Migration Policy

When discussing labour migration governance in Europe, many observers – including academics – rather intuitively take regulatory distinctions for granted. Opposing categories usually include EU free movers vs. workers from outside the EU and high-skilled vs. low-skilled migrant workers. These schisms belittle, however, a) the creative activity of constructing these categories through regulation, b) their interaction with complexly stratified labour market relationships for both EU and non-EU workers, including wage biases based on the patchy recognition of non-domestic qualifications on European labour markets, and c) the ways in which formal and informal labour markets are themselves shaped by regulatory distinctions in migration