Sunday, March 16, 2014
Congressional B (Omni Shoreham)
Berlin has been a destination for Eastern European migrants for centuries, especially from Poland. With the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and the opening of Germany’s labor market in 2011 the migration context for Poles and other Europeans changed profoundly. Today, Poles make up the second largest ethnic minority in Berlin. Despite their large numbers, Poles have often been described as Berlin’s invisible minority and also received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. This paper presents selected findings of an exploratory qualitative study of Polish immigrants’ labor market experiences in the city of Berlin. Between May and November 2012, I conducted 44 unstructured in-depth interviews with Polish immigrants of different ages, skill levels, occupations, and lengths of stay in Berlin as well as interviews with key informants. This paper focuses on one of the key dimensions that my study explored – the ways in which the policy framework shapes how Polish immigrants navigate and experience the labor market in Berlin. My research suggests that policies have had unintended consequences, in the sense that a substantial number of Polish immigrants in Berlin are forced to work in informal or semi-legal employment arrangements, despite there being no overt legal reasons for doing so any more. This has serious negative consequences for the immigrants’ economic and social welfare. My research further indicates that other Eastern European migrants, Bulgarians and Romanians in particular, are also already being channeled into similar exploitive employment arrangements.
