Negotiating Varieties of Capitalism? Crisis and Change in Contemporary British and German Labor Migration Policy

Less than a decade ago liberal British and cautious German labor migration policy counted as institutional spill-overs of two opposed varieties of capitalism. By 2014, however, Germany offers one of the most liberal labor migration approaches across the rich world, while the British governmenthas severely curbed admission rules. Is the explanatory power of capitalist variation exhausted for comparative labor migration policies? What role do notions of crisis play in that regards? This paper compares policy changes in Britain and Germany to test the relevance of crisis frames as explanatory venue for change. The analysis highlights the need, certainly not to ditch, but to nuance institutional complementarity claims between firms’ skills provision strategies and labor migration policies. From this perspective, policy reforms come with powerful ‘crises’ frames whose justifications for change interact with – but are never functionally determined by – capitalist coordination models. Britain treats the liberal market economy’s openness to foreign workers of all skill levels as root cause for a deeply felt migration control crisis and seeks to tame firms’ profitability strategies with restrictive policies. German decision-makers have come to view the skills provision mechanisms of the coordinated market economy as key cure to the perceived demographic crisis also for lower-skilled admissions. Overall, the paper argues that capitalist varieties should not be mistaken for neutral informants of labor migration policies. Instead, policies entail both the aim and capacity to negotiate national capitalisms according to shifting (and not solely economic) notions of crisis.