Enforcing outsiders' rights: seasonal agricultural workers and institutionalised exploitation in the EU

Enforcement is a crucial aspect for understanding labour market hierarchies in Europe and exploitation of mobile and migrant EU workers. Whereas most literature on intra-EU mobility and enforcement has focused on posted workers, this paper sheds light on enforcement in seasonal agriculture and forestry where posted work is very uncommon yet mobile workers overrepresented. In the EU, enforcement highly depends on Member States' capacities. Therefore, we explore how labour rights, and specifically wages, are enforced across four EU Member States with different enforcement regimes, namely Austria, Germany, Sweden and the UK. In line with existing research, we expect that enforcement will be more effective also in agriculture/forestry where it is organised mainly through industrial relations, as opposed to administrative or judicial enforcement. Nevertheless, our review of enforcement practices suggests that seasonal agricultural and forestry workers' rights are neglected across countries, irrespective of enforcement regime. We argue that the scant efforts made to enforce these workers' rights amounts to institutionalised exploitation of labour market outsiders and that administrative enforcement is necessary to ensure hypermobile workers' rights. We also draw attention to the contradictory role of the EU and its simultaneous attempt to strengthen and weaken enforcement.