Within the European Union, cross-border labour mobility has traditionally been governed by the principle of equal treatment, which protects mobile workers from discrimination and domestic workers from wage competition from foreign workers. However since the beginning of the 1990´ies, posting of workers has become increasingly common as a means of intra-EU labour mobility. Here, workers employed in one country are send by their employer to work in another country, but their employment conditions are partially determined by the home country.

Posting raises several important issues. First, the employer-driven nature of posting raises question of which employers strategies lies behind the increasing use of posting. Why do companies use posted workers, is this a new labour mobility regime and what are the costs and benefits of posting? Second, because posting is primarily governed by the labour market regulation of the country of employment and only secondarily re-regulate by the host member state, posting opens for wage competition and raises questions about the rights of posted workers. Third, because it is unclear to what extent member states can re-regulate the employment conditions of posted workers, posting creates legal tensions and issues of state sovereignty. More specifically, posting creates contested ‘zones of exception’ where the connection between physical space and state authority is disentangled.

This panel draws together scholars that engaging with these issues by studying the everyday practices, institutional dilemmas and political conflicts of posting as a new regime of labour mobility within the European Union.