Labour migration conference 2015: challenges for migrant workers in Denmark

Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Niels Jul Nielsen ,Associate Professor of the University of Copenhagen, Ethnology Section, Denmark. Niels Jul Nielsen ,Associate Professor of the University of Copenhagen, Ethnology Section, Denmark. Photo: Terje Lepp/norden.ee

Niels Jul Nielsen ,Associate Professor of the University of Copenhagen, Ethnology Section, Denmark gave a presentation at the Nordic-Baltic Labour Migration Conference on March 27 in Tallinn. She was interviewed by Häli Ann Reintam, Master's Student at the University of Tartu, Estonia..

What are the main challenges for migrant workers in Denmark?

There are several, but one of them is to be treated equally to the Danish. They have a hard time getting jobs, because Danish workers will be preferred. So they are also interested in being a little more attractive, being maybe a little bit cheaper and also being able to find their own niche in the labour market. And I would also say to be a part of the trade union system, but again that is only interesting for them if the labour union takes into consideration that they have some special needs as migrant labourers. They cannot be treated just like the Danes, so they need to find a balance. They get into the Danish labour market, where they are not attractive to employers, because they prefer Danish workers, whom they know. Then they will not be a part of the whole trade union system and the orderly labour market. That would be a problem, because they could be subjected to all kinds of bad conditions. On the other hand that would still be preferred to not having a job.

Do migrant workers influence the overall labour market? Or is the challenge rather to secure the same rights for migrant workers?

Absolutely, very much I would say. At the same time the basic rights of Danish labourers are declining, because of the pressure from foreign workers. We are in a transformational period, I think. It has always been like that, but the fact that we have a new labour market from the eastern bloc countries, where they have severely lower wages, is a challenge we haven't seen before.

For migrant workers in health care and in other public sector areas, where they are employed as public employees, they come to work in totally similar conditions to the Danish workers and that functions fine.

But of course as you know, we have many different kinds of labour workers. I'm mainly talking about Polish labourers. Not so many Estonians, but Lithuanians in agriculture, that's again a whole other story. It seems like the Lithuanians in the countryside get in and are very attractive for farmers, because they are cheaper. A lot of them will begin to settle in and bring their families and then they start to demand the same conditions and wages as the Danish workers. It's an interplay between the work and family situations. You cannot understand that, looking at them just as migrant workers, but it is really import what role their family has – if it is still in the sending country, because then they are only interested in working much more than the Danish workers. But if the family comes with, it is a completely different story.

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