Introduction: Transnational Labour Mobility – Engine for Social Convergence or Divergence in Europe?

The EU accession of 10 Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries in 2004–2007 was a milestone in the history of European integration. After more than 50 years behind the Iron Curtain, the most salient benefit for people in the accession states was the liberty to move freely across the entire EU/EEA area¹ in search for better jobs and livelihoods. Although their economies only added 7 per cent to the EU GDP, the roughly 100 million citizens of the CEE countries increased the EU population by one-fifth and brought a corresponding rise in the total EU/EEA labour force. Given the huge East-West gap in earnings and living conditions – nominal wage differentials ranging from 1:5 to 1:13 – the opportunities opened by access to the labour markets in western Europe unleashed a surge in labour migration from the CEE states. While European integration had thus far brought very modest internal migration, the Eastward enlargement of the EU spurred the largest European movements of labour in modern time – mostly from East to West, but eventually also from South to North. Coinciding with an unprecedented sequence of economic boom and bust leading to record high European unemployment, these movements have led to fiercer job competition and have put the institutional arrangements of European labour markets under strain. Coupled with increased flows of capital, investment and relocation of production in the reverse direction – reinforcing product market competition – this has triggered heated debates about the impact on labour markets, welfare states and the compatibility of free movement, equal treatment and workers’ rights (Dølvik & Visser, 2009). While the official EU vision of labour mobility as a lever for upward social convergence has been upheld, the explosive force of the issue was ultimately demonstrated in the recent UK referendum over EU membership where labour immigration was a central argument for many of the disenchanted voters that sealed the majority for Brexit and cast the future of European integration into uncertainty.