What Determines Labor Migration Policy for Low-Waged Occupations? Preliminary Results of a Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis

The widespread assumption that the so-called low-skilled immigration is supported by the governments of liberal democracies only when there is a corresponding economic need does not with-stand thorough analysis. Even though social scientists agree that the economic demand for foreign workforce is, in general, fundamental to labor migration policy, it is beyond dispute that this does not influence migration policy alone and certainly does not translate itself one-to-one into government action. Moreover, economic performance does not seem to exert any significant influence on labor migration policy, if at all. Beyond the classical political-economic rationale, however, previous research on migration policy with regard to the immigration of workers into low-wage jobs has provided only a very fragmentary picture of the mechanisms and causal links in this field. A broad spectrum of influencing factors has so far been discussed in isolation (i.e. institutions of the political system and the production system, labor market factors, post-entry rights, policy legacies, etc.). Less known, however, is how these determinants interact and in what combination they lead to more liberal or restrictive policies. In contrast to this narrow focus on individual components, this paper aims to examine the combinations of different influences and to identify patterns that lead to a liberalized policy of labor migration to low-wage occupations. As part of a larger study, this paper considers four conditions: (1) the socio-economic system, (2) the political system, (3) the rights of immigrants after entry and (4) the host society's historical experience of immigration. With the help of a Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) - a method that migration scholars have only recently discovered for their research - necessary and sufficient conditions of the labor migration policies of six liberal democracies (France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, Great Britain, and the USA) after the Second World War are identified and discussed. Using set theory and Boolean Algebra, the paper at hand is, therefore, the first in the field to link labor migration policy, economic interests, institutional frameworks, and historical legacies in order to overcome the fragmentation of migration policy theory to date.