Trade Union Responses to Immigration in Europe

This chapter explores the challenges of developing trade union responses to immigration at the European level. The issue of immigration is exacerbated at the European level by the search for a common framework of meaning and initiatives in the context of different national experiences and responses. This chapter draws on interviews with trade union officials at the European level and participant observation of initiatives around immigration to consider the way in which trade union policy on immigration has developed. Our research demonstrated that initiatives in European trade unionism were mainly aimed at increasing awareness of the issues surrounding immigration and to share and develop 'good practice' responses in trade unions and to benchmark these responses. One initiative that we document, ETUC's Workplace Europe project.