Corporatist Birds of a Feather? Austria and Dutch Migration Policies

At the beginning of the decade when many European countries began drafting new labor migration policies in response to labor shortages, Austria and Netherlands refrained. One might guess that since both are corporatist-style economies with tightly regulated labor markets, bringing in unregulated labor through immigration would be difficult. Deeper analysis shows that there are two different logics behind the cool attitude toward foreign labor recruitment. In Austria, the strength of the relationship between the social partners and the strong opposition by trade unions has led to a highly regulated and minimalist labor migration program. In the Netherlands, social partnership also constrains the ability of employers to bring in labor, but it is far more a case that employers can draw from other sources of flexible labor. Through the use of labor market statistics, organizational materials, media reports, and personal interviews with representatives from trade unions, employers’ associations and government ministries in the IT, hospitality and construction sectors, the paper traces the processes that have lead to new policies and draw out the preferences that have kept these at a minimum, offering insights to the differences within varieties of capitalism