Abstract
Relations between trade unions and migrant workers are potentially fraught with conflicting interests. Yet, just as union membership could reduce the risk for individual migrant workers of being exploited in host country labour markets, the presence of migrants conceivably could provide tangible benefits to unions, including an expanded pool to recruit members from. Patterns across Europe differ, though, largely as a result of the standing and strength of trade unions in national labour market arrangements. Unions enjoying high organisational density of native workers also tend to be better able to recruit members among the foreign-born, although the latter are rarely organised to the same extent as their native-born peers. Commonalities, on the other hand, include a readiness of unions to express, at least at the level of principle, solidarity with migrant workers, be they labour migrants or refugees, permanent or temporary residents, authorised or undocumented. At the same time, a recurrent theme is vocal trade union opposition to labour migration policies as they exist. Research is yet to pick up any systematic Europe-wide changes as might result from recent crises (the Syrian refugee reception crisis, the Covid pandemic) or the anti-migrant shift observed among voters across much of the continent.