Measuring and analysing the social and labour rights of irregular migrants : new indicators for twenty-eight European countries

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dc.contributor.authorFOX-RUHS, Clare Teresa
dc.contributor.authorPALME, Joakim
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-06T10:01:13Z
dc.date.available2025-06-06T10:01:13Z
dc.date.issued2025
dc.descriptionPublished online: June 2025
dc.description.abstractThere is substantial societal and political concern about the social and labour market vulnerabilities of migrants living and working in European countries without the legal right to reside. In this context, the role of legal rights for “irregular migrants” as a means of addressing some of these vulnerabilities is an important issue that remains underexplored. We lack systematic evidence on the social and labour rights that irregular migrants can claim based on the national laws of host countries, on how rights vary cross-nationally, and how rights affect irregular migrants’ conditions and capabilities. To address these gaps, this paper introduces ‘IRMIGRIGHT’ - the first bespoke database of social and labour rights of irregular migrants in twenty-eight European countries. It advances a multidimensional conceptualisation of the rights of irregular migrants as “capabilities” and develops a novel set of indicators to measure the breadth and depth of irregular migrants’ rights. The database is innovative in methodological terms in its analysis of both explicit and implicit modes of rights protection and exclusion of irregular migrants under national laws. Key findings indicate significant variation in how European countries protect the rights of irregular migrants and in the types of rights protected, with labour rights better protected, on average, than social rights. Where rights are legally guaranteed to irregular migrants, there are large gaps in the quality of those rights, measured relative to the rights of citizens: in particular, irregular migrants enjoy substantially less freedom in claiming and enforcing their rights and, in many countries, they are subject to discriminatory user costs (surcharges) for accessing public healthcare including emergency services.
dc.description.sponsorshipPRIME is funded by the European Union Horizon Europe funding programme for research and innovation (project number 101095113).
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdf
dc.identifier.doi10.2870/8618653
dc.identifier.isbn9789294666697
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1814/92803
dc.language.isoen
dc.publisherEuropean University Institute
dc.relationProtecting Irregular Migrants in Europe: Institutions, Interests and Policies
dc.relation.ispartofseriesProtecting Irregular Migrants in Europe (PRIME)
dc.relation.ispartofseriesResearch Paper
dc.relation.ispartofseries2025
dc.relation.ispartofseries[Migration Policy Centre]
dc.rightsinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
dc.rights.licenseAttribution 4.0 Internationalen
dc.rights.urihttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.titleMeasuring and analysing the social and labour rights of irregular migrants : new indicators for twenty-eight European countries
dc.typeTechnical Report
dspace.entity.typePublication
person.identifier.other43133
relation.isAuthorOfPublication57fa0944-2ede-4f69-8860-946d11466ef7
relation.isAuthorOfPublication.latestForDiscovery57fa0944-2ede-4f69-8860-946d11466ef7
relation.isProjectOfPublication136bea02-25a9-4562-8fd5-26dfc464307d
relation.isProjectOfPublication.latestForDiscovery136bea02-25a9-4562-8fd5-26dfc464307d
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