The Labour Migration Directive

Abstract

Economic motivations have driven immigration to Europe for many decades. Both immigrants and destination countries considered immigration as a way to increase their wealth. From World War II until the mid-1970s, North-western European countries recruited foreign labour from Southern Europe, Northern Africa, and their former colonies to fill shortages in their national labour markets (Castles and Kosack 1973: 3–5). In the 1970s, European countries stopped recruiting foreign labour. Due to the oil crisis, which led to a recession and high unemployment, the ability for migrants to enter and stay in Europe was basically limited to family reunification, as well as student and asylum migration (Martiniello 2006: 310–312). Since the 1970s, European states essentially reduced steady channels for medium- to long-term immigration and labour migrants would mostly be admitted temporarily in times of need (Moulier-Boutang and Papademetriou 1994; Menz 2002).