Why is work migration profitable for the EU?

A report in 2000 from the EU's Social and Economic Committee summarizes the causes and asks for further research on the issue of the expanding employment of migrant workers in agriculture. These include:

• the pool of native workers has shrunk as rural-area populations have declined;
• native workers are not attracted to seasonal employment in agriculture and do not always meet the conditions in terms of motivation, skills, and mobility; more importantly, most are not willing to accept low wages and bad working conditions;
• unemployed native workers could lose or see their unemployment benefits reduced if they take low-paying agricultural work, which does not provide the security of full-time employment;
• the temporary employment of migrants makes bargaining with them easier than with native workers;
• employers can more easily avoid making social security payments when they employ migrant workers.

The Greek Case
According to the latest census, the population of Greece increased from 10,259,900 in 1991 to 10,964,020 in 2001. This increase can be almost exclusively attributed to immigration in the past decade. The census shows that the foreign population of Greece in 2001 was 762,191, making up approximately seven percent of the total population.

Most of the jobs migrants undertake are non-skilled, manual work well below their education and qualifications. Although they are mainly employed in construction (24.5 percent), about 17.5 percent work in agriculture. Greek agriculture today employs only 16% of the economically active, native population. 

In intensive cultivation, such as sultana grapes, asparagus, tobacco, greenhouse produce and flower production, and the fruit industry in general, migrants have nearly become the exclusive contributors of wage labor in Greek agriculture. Migrant workers have addressed structural developments in rural Greece, including longstanding labor shortages due to emigration and changes in the rural economy, the younger generation's increasing rejection of rural life and jobs, and the native rural population's growing tendency to obtain non-agricultural employment. 

Local Attitudes Towards Migrants
More than two-thirds of the population of rural areas widely acknowledged the positive implications of migrants' presence primarily because labor shortages were covered, labor costs fell, and consumption expanded. Older respondents and the farming population generally held more positive attitudes towards the migrants while non-farmers and the younger members of households held more negative opinions.

The research indicated that migrant workers were relatively more accepted and integrated in the less-developed rural regions than in the developed ones. This was related to the proportion of migrants in the total population of each region, their family status, and their job characteristics. For example, there seemed to be more acceptance of migrants living permanently in one region together with their families, as opposed to seasonal/irregular laborers traveling without families. 

SOURCE:   http://www.migrationinformation.org/Feature/display.cfm?ID=337