Abstract
This article analyses the problematic aspects of the pathways used to recruit mobile migrant labour. The author reflects on characteristics of intra-EU mobility and of third-country nationals’ recruitment and discusses similarities and differences between the two types of recruitment. Drawing on recent research evidence from several EU countries, it focuses on issues such as recruitment costs and depth bondage to address the question of how free the choice to migrate is. Transnational recruitment of labour emerges as demand-driven and externalised to a booming industry of private agencies. Labour migration outcomes are shaped by hiring practices by this recruitment industry. There is evidence of the use of go-betweens undermining compliance with, and enforcement of, labour standards. The article draws policy recommendations for the re-regulation of migrant labour recruitment, by making the most powerful actors on the labour demand side, that is, the user undertakings in destination countries, accountable.
Keywords
Introduction
In political and academic debates on cross-border labour mobility it is often presumed, in line with the neoclassical economic view of migration (Borjas, 1989), that migrant workers decide freely to move, reacting rationally to economic information such as income differentials. Different regulations imply that EU-citizens enjoy this freedom fully thanks to free movement, while third-country workers (hereafter TCNs) use different pathways.
Research on migration governance has paid little attention to the actual role of the labour recruitment industry (for a review, see Rosewarne, 2024). Migration governance includes not only governmental and international organisations but also non-state agents that mediate migration processes, including with regard to non-regular migrants who are unable to use legal migration channels (Czaika and Reinprecht, 2020; Neergard and Selberg, 2024). The labour recruitment industry also develops ‘legal’ strategies to derive commercial gain from connecting the so-called ‘supply’ and ‘demand’ sides of the global labour market. User undertakings in destination countries provide with their demand the main driver in this market. This has led to the growth and commercialisation of an industry of ‘labour providers’ consisting of international recruitment agencies and other profit-orientated intermediates engaged in much more than organising the spatial relocation of workers. This recruitment industry is active inside the EU and, as the well runs dry in EU-countries, in third countries (McCollum and Findlay, 2018).
In this paper, I want to shed light on the diversity of channels and pathways that apply to legal recruitment of migrant labour. Labour migrants are here defined as workers from within and outside the EU who are legally working (or looking for work) in another country than their home country. My focus is on the hitherto largely neglected mechanisms of externalised labour sourcing provided by the recruitment industry, drawing on observations and studies from the last 15 years, notably: a European network of labour inspectors in the
Intermediated transnational hiring
A number of studies has tried to identify and define the channels used for international recruitment of workers. An analysis of East-West European labour mobility before Brexit has detailed different recruitment channels and the structuring of migrant labour to the UK (Findlay et al., 2013). The authors looked at how these channels influence the nature of labour flow and worked out a typology of partly overlapping channels, with three main actors: the (local, regional or foreign) labour provider or recruiter, the informal migrants’ network and employer-led direct recruitment. In a 2019 survey, the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA, 2019) listed different channels that were used by respondents, both from EU and non-EU countries, in the search for a job: 1) personal networks, friends, relatives, former employers or other workers; 2) recruitment agencies, a temporary agency or subcontractor, that is, any person or any company to whom the execution is assigned of all or part of the obligations of a prior agreement/arrangement; 3) pick-up spots where employers pick up day labourers from known locations; 4) finding the job themselves; 5) online recruitment and searching or through social media; 6) direct recruitment by user undertakings or assisted by NGOs.
Some channels are irrelevant in a cross-border context, while others are identical to the channels identified by Eurobarometer (European Commission, 2022), which provides information on the pathways used by EU-citizens who envisage working abroad. With more answers possible, most respondents turn to their personal contacts, one-third to online job search tools, one-third to online social networks, 30% resorts to direct contact with employers abroad and 20% to both public employment services and to private agencies. The use of internet-based job research methods and recruitment, including social media, is increasing among respondents. Jobs are advertised on portals and social media, offering attractive working conditions for low-skilled workers abroad, with sometimes inaccurate, sometimes misleading information on the type of contract (for instance, promises of a fulltime job, whilst the contract is on-call and guarantees no stable working hours). The European Commission listed channels such as public employment services, private employment agencies or head-hunters, the media (Internet, newspapers, magazines), direct recruitment or via employees and/or personal contacts (European Commission, 2023). Overall, recruiters and intermediates are highly active in the lower tiers of the labour market (ELA, 2025).
Other research looks more at the intertwined or chain character of recruitment channels. A German study describes recruitment practises characterised by a complex network of subcontracting arrangements consisting of a core of multinational staffing corporations, an intermediate layer of regional subsidiary contractors and a broad network of small local service providers and recruitment agencies (Manolova, 2024). The bottom layer consists of a patchy mix of individual labour brokers, informal recruitment agencies and entrepreneurial migrant recruiters who function as a link between employers and employees. These individuals are often regional or transnational ‘brokers’ who facilitate services and transactions, and their activities are not only limited to job placement but also include other areas of life such as housing, transport and healthcare.
The size of the different channels varies from country to country. The recruitment industry is especially active in (and for) countries that experience economic growth and strong labour demand. This is notably the case in labour-intensive sectors. A study conducted in 2019 revealed that almost half of the recruited mobile migrant labour in the Netherlands, excluding the high-skilled (recruited via the Dutch version of the EU Blue-Card), worked for a temporary agency, especially in logistics, distribution, agriculture and production (ABU, 2024). In origin countries, as, for instance, stated in a Bulgarian study (Popivanov and Kovacheva, 2023), workers are recruited based on the demand of the client. The word ‘clients’ refers to potential employers abroad (user undertakings in the receiving country). The main motivation of job applicants is financial, or as stated by a private agency recruiting workers for construction ‘if it was possible to earn that much here, hardly anyone would go to work abroad’ (Popivanov and Kovacheva, 2023). Recruiters often do not operate as formal companies, making regulation and oversight difficult. They function as intermediaries in origin countries, earning commissions for each worker they recruit. As a result, workers arrive without social support, at best accompanied by friends or partners (Ramírez-Melgarejo et al., 2025).
Practices in the international recruitment industry can expose migrant labour to a broad range of risks of abuse and/or mistreatment, often in a grey zone between ‘perfectly’ legal and an illegal or undeclared activity. Subcontracting flourishes in an industry with low entry barriers, minimal capital requirements and often no need for fixed premises, making it a breeding ground for artificial arrangements and ‘virtual’ offices. Despite international institutional concern with abuse of migrant workers (e.g. European Commission, 2013), studies identified risks ranging from circumvention or breaches of local labour standards to human trafficking and forced labour (ELA, 2025; FRA, 2019; IOM, 2022): - Hidden and/or excessive fees charged to workers, resulting in debt bondage. - Unilateral changes in employment terms and conditions, including fraudulent misrepresentation of jobs and wages. - Non-payment or under-payment of wages and other forms of direct labour abuse. - Arbitrary fines and other deductions. - Social isolation and poor housing and living conditions. - Restrictions on the free movement in destination countries and the inability to change employers for TCNs. - Retention of passports/IDs/travel documents. - Other forms of deliberate workers’ exploitation and human rights abuses.
In the search for redress, one of the most fundamental problems is to build up evidence. Intermediaries involved in recruitment processes disappear when deceived workers try to contact them or authorities try to investigate complaints. Agencies pop up for a certain period and disappear shortly after (especially as investigations start). Local brokers are not obliged to register anywhere or to provide job seekers with decent information. Unveiling the services and activities of agencies is based on fragmented data, and decent assessment of recruitment practices facilitating exploitative labour situations is still too much on an ad hoc basis.
Recruitment costs and depth bondage
Recruitment fees and related costs can be defined as ‘any fees or costs incurred in the recruitment process in order for workers to secure employment or placement, regardless of the manner, timing or location of their imposition or collection’ (ILO, 2019). The
However, the ILO has highlighted over a longer period that recruiters are a well-documented source of exploitation of migrant labour (ILO, 2017). A critical source of illegal profits comes from unlawful recruitment fees and related costs that victims must frequently bear: the ILO estimates that recruitment fees account for 26% of illegal profits related to migrant labour exploitation (ILO, 2024). Local brokers and recruiters generate their income from both fees charged to recruited workers and from commissions charged to the clients in destination countries (employers or recruitment agencies). Very often it turns out that workers are being charged fees by recruitment agencies inside the EU and abroad that are well in excess, for instance, of visa processing fees. The fees may be charged by employers, recruitment or travel intermediaries or by corrupt officials demanding bribes or kickbacks. To pay for recruitment fees and related costs to secure a job or placement, many workers incur heavy debt. In addition to fees charged for recruitment (matching employees from one country with an employer in another), fees are charged for managing the associated paperwork and documentation, for organising travel and transportation to the destination and reserving accommodation underway and on arrival (IHRB, 2022). Overall, migrants pay for the costs of their recruitment and migration instead of the user undertaking.
Too little knowledge can lead migrant workers to accept or even expect costs from agencies for recruitment services. Martin (2017) refers to local (sub)agents who live in or visit villages with low-skilled workers. They get to know potential migrants, can determine what workers are willing to pay and inform the recruiter, who often collects from the worker. According, for instance, to the Helsinki Police Department trafficking unit most migrant workers from the so-called developing countries paid recruitment fees varying from €10,000 to 25,000 to get into Finland (Pekkarinen and Jokinen, 2023).
Effective monitoring in sending countries to prevent recruitment fees as well as fees for services that are no requirement for the application is lacking. Similarly, there is no ban on the use of repayment clauses that require workers to pay back the upfront costs that a sponsor has invested if workers leave employment. Fictious administrative costs and charging a series of dubious fees or deductions lead to situations of debt bondage. Indebtedness makes workers even more dependent on their employers and vulnerable to abuse, and the possibility to negotiate better conditions is practically non-existent (Carrera et al., 2017). Costello and Barnard (2022) signal the phenomenon of ‘advice sharks’, reminding the operation mode of ‘loan sharks’. They profit from those needing help often charging significant fees for their ‘services’ using intimidation tactics to elicit payment, even when the advice they have provided is wrong.
In theory and in accordance with national law, EU-citizens who want to work in another Member State do not have to pay a fee for their recruitment (Article 6.3 of the EU Temporary Agency Directive). Some states allow agencies to charge fees, for instance, for transport or accommodation, if proportionate, fully documented in a contract and agreed to and understood by the worker. But in most EU Member States, charging costs and fees for the recruitment as such is prohibited within the national territory. Charging fees is considered as a ‘red flag’ in an agency’s assessment process (European Commission, 2013).
However, the presumption that practices of depth bondage, resulting from recruitment costs, do not exist for EU-citizens, because of the rights they can derive from free movement principles, can be questioned. A 2019 study reports that workers, TCNs as well as EU-citizens, who used a recruitment agency, revealed varying forms of abuse or fraud already at the recruitment stage. Intermediaries withheld money, even though the EU-workers performed legal jobs (FRA, 2019). Mobile EU-citizens are not always aware of the applicable laws and jurisprudence of the host country where they will perform their work. Research in the Baltic region revealed, for instance, that, among EU-citizens who were recruited to work abroad, debt bondage arose from salary advances or loans to cover recruitment or transport costs or from daily living or emergency expenses, such as medical costs (Sirgedienė, 2020). In most cases of debt bondage, the initial debt grew as a result of salary retention, manipulation of accounts and/or excessively high interest rates at a rate that could not be met, and the individual was unable to leave the work as the debt mounted and could not be paid with the wages received.
How free is the intra-EU mobility?
Following the EU enlargements of 2004 and 2007, the share of non-standard employment contracts increased, resulting in declining coverage of employee rights, social security and collective agreements (Cremers, 2023). The eastern enlargement intensified the pressure on wage costs through bigger wage differentials and promoted corporate strategies based on labour cost saving (Moriarty et al., 2012). There is extensive evidence that migrant workers are overrepresented in the precarious segment of the labour market (ELA, 2025). Studies from the 2000s already showed higher risks for migrant labour to end up in the lower tiers of the labour market, with a concentration in food-processing, hospitality, distribution and retail (Gautié and Schmitt, 2010).
The employment strategies focussed on the availability of the new pool of workers from the new Member States by enforcing higher levels of flexibility (McCollum and Findlay, 2018). More recently, labour mobility also takes place between Central and Eastern European countries, further expanding the model of flexible recruitment (Hassan et al., 2023). The appearance of ‘letterbox’ companies that function as labour supply companies in the EU, obstructing effective monitoring and enforcement of labour regulations, confirms that intermediaries contribute to employers’ regulatory avoidance strategies also within the freedom of movement regime (Cremers, 2014).
A panel study of the recruitment of Polish workers in the final period of the Irish economic boom (2007–10) has illustrated how immigrants became ‘employees of choice’ (Moriarty et al., 2012). Employers in certain sectors developed a preference for migrant labour based on attitude and work ethic, next to cost considerations. According to the study, the notion of ‘labour shortage’ or ‘skill shortage’ raises more questions than answers as it leaves unexamined the processes through which employers recruit immigrants and specific immigrants end up in specific jobs. Recruitment in boom-years Ireland took place with a casualised approach through informal procedures that made little use of formal qualifications and, according to the authors, undermined normal forms of recruitment.
The research revealed an elaborate system of collaboration between recruitment agents in Poland and Ireland and user undertakings across sectors in Ireland, particularly for bottom- to middle-level jobs. The role of the offices varied and most often included selecting and screening of candidates, organisation of relocation and signing of temporary contracts. User undertakings saw an opportunity to save on costs, also for qualified workers who were cheaper than the local workforce. They preferred to resort to this casualised, informal selection approach and abstained from labour-saving innovation or alternative employment strategies. Whereas the HRM literature assumes that commitment develops after recruitment and in exchange for employment security (Atkinson and Meagher, 1986), employers search for channels that appear to offer demonstration of commitment as a prerequisite for employment.
Surveys among migrant labour in the Netherlands signalled a lack of investment in Human Resources (Cremers, 2023). According to 2023 data from the Dutch Statistical Office, workers from Central and Eastern Europe were for a vast majority (71%) working in flexible jobs, with temporary agency work accounting for 62% of these flexible jobs (CBS, 2024). A study among Spanish workers in the Netherlands revealed that the share of (working) Spaniards with permanent employment contracts was low (29%), as was the proportion in self-employment (6%). Before leaving Spain, 29% already had found a job (SCP, 2016). Many workers found themselves in vulnerable situations, unaware of their rights and with little recourse to legal assistance (Ramírez-Melgarejo et al., 2025).
Another study focuses on ‘migration chain’ networks that frame specific large flows, that is, Romanians to Italy and Spain, Poles to the UK and Germany and Portuguese to France (Benton and Petrovic, 2013). They describe a mechanism whereby once migrant communities establish in certain regions, the settled migrants provide newcomers with employment contacts and housing. A comparable channel identified in the Portuguese construction sector is the use of employee referral schemes through other co-nationals that already work ‘on site’. Earlier migrants act as brokers or go-betweens, in direct contact with temporary agencies, subcontractors or user undertakings (Monteiro and Queiros, 2016).
The recruitment of third-country nationals
TCNs make up a substantial part of key workers in Europe, and temporary labour migration schemes targeting TCNs receive often enthusiastic backing from employers due to the certainty and greater control over workers, as well as from the media (e.g. Economist, 2025). Most high-income countries recognise the need for migrant labour from third countries at both the high- and low-skill end of the labour market (OECD, 2022). Unlike the free movement of EU-citizens, recruitment of TCNs falls under immigration law, a legal area that is almost exclusively assigned to the Member States. Nationally controlled schemes provide TCNs with legal access to a country where they are supposed to reside and work, with a work and residence permit for that Member State. The entrance to the labour market is based on points systems or national quotas, ‘sponsorship’ by companies, (bilateral) agreements with preferred and dedicated countries or on the EU Blue Card (or similar national schemes) for highly skilled workers. Entry conditions are not harmonised, and the applied schemes are rather divergent (Cremers, 2024). The role of the future employer (or ‘sponsor’) is a key condition in most procedures. Workers conclude an employment contract with a firm that becomes the ‘employer sponsor’ responsible for complying with all labour legislation and other applicable labour standards. TCN-scheme operators holding a ‘sponsor’ license or certification can be responsible for recruiting workers, often in collaboration with local agents, with workers holding little negotiating power (Bogoeski and Rasnača, 2023).
TCNs are generally entitled to work-related rights set by national and European legislation (PICUM, 2022). However, vulnerable workers are often not able to enjoy the rights they are entitled to (ELA, 2025). Enforcement mechanisms vary by country and level, and their effectiveness can be questioned. Moreover, the thin line between enforcement of workers’ rights and the application of (restrictive) migration policies can lead to a balancing act between protection and policing (FRA, 2019).
Investigations on TCNs have found evidence of false promises regarding their status, employment conditions and missing information on contracts, pay and other rights – that is, in the case of zero-hour contracts for workers expecting a standard working week (Bogoeski and Rasnača, 2023). There are multiple reports of poor accommodation, underpayment or even non-payment and excessive hours (Cremers, 2024; Pekkarinen and Jokinen, 2023). Often, threats of deportation proceedings are an effective way to maintain control over the workforce (FRA, 2019).
Oversight of scheme operators over compliance with sponsorship requirements and with obligations regarding the working and living conditions is often fragmented and inadequate, and sanctioning is weak. This is certainly the case with breaches and non-compliance with working conditions that do not reach the thresholds of slavery or labour exploitation. For instance, in the UK, when applying for a sponsorship licence the Home Office examines only whether the company or any of its key personnel has previously breached immigration rules. Previous compliance or non-compliance with labour standards or employment law is not examined (Posch et al., 2024). This is practice in most countries.
Moreover, there is neither a juridical frame nor an institutionalised structure for international cooperation between countries of origin and destination. Whilst EU-citizens can base their claims on a developed legal set of norms and instruments, this is not the case for migrants from outside the EU. Even in Germany, with a regulated market for national temporary work agencies, there is no decent registration of the recruitment industry. The recruitment practice of TCNs is largely a black box (Hillmann et al., 2025). Moreover, most EU-host countries have until recently shown little interest in addressing recruitment abuses that occur outside their jurisdiction unless they meet the high threshold of labour exploitation, forced labour or trafficking in human beings.
In some countries, the use of recruitment agencies for TCNs has become the norm in, for instance, agricultural, logistics and the meat processing sector (IOM, 2022). Responsibility for decent hiring and monitoring worker welfare is outsourced. The agencies function as the worker’s visa sponsor and receive a fee for the hiring. TCNs on these routes cannot easily change jobs, and their visa status is tied to the visa sponsor through the sponsorship system. If they do not quickly find a new employer and visa sponsor after the end of a contract, they face deportation (Palumbo, 2024).
In the UK, the government expanded the TCN-schemes after Brexit (the Skilled Worker, the Health and Care Worker and the Seasonal Worker Visa). These routes do not grant workers recourse to public funds; if their employment is interrupted or terminated, they lack access to public support mechanisms such as universal credit, housing and homelessness assistance and housing benefit. Many occupations were added to the UK Shortage Occupation List, part of the Skilled Worker Route. The schemes apply the Immigration Salary List, a set of roles with ‘minimum general thresholds’ that allows employers to hire people overseas at salaries 20% lower than the general thresholds. Oversight of the scheme appears as minimal or ineffective (Neal, 2022; Thiemann et al., 2024). In a UK study, surveyed workers report paying between £0 and £5500 in total to come to the UK to work before even earning a wage. Only three in five workers report receiving a contract in a language they understand, on or before their first day of work (Focus on Labour Exploitation, 2024).
The role of private employment services reconsidered
Since the mid-1990s, several countries de-monopolised and deregulated employment services, opening them to private actors. The role of local recruitment agencies in international recruitment varies, with duties such as facilitating early round interviewing and mass screening in the home country, organising relocation and induction processes and sometimes signing contracts with temporary staff. Online tests and interviews are used for selection (Moriarty et al., 2012).
Private agencies have increasingly established subsidiaries abroad (Cremers, 2022). Research in the Czech Republic revealed how temporary agencies were used by Foxconn. Agencies organised the recruitment and selection in the origin country, cross-border transportation, work and living arrangements in the destination country and return to origin countries during low production periods (Andrijasevic and Sacchetto, 2017).
A process of brokers ‘professionalisation’ has occurred, involving in particular a move from word of mouth or leaflets at village halls to Internet and social media tools for advertising. The cross-border recruitment chain can also become longer through subcontracting, resulting in a network of enterprises, gangmasters and local brokers. Ethnographic research in Portugal has documented how vast areas of the less developed regions became suppliers of a non-skilled labour force with ‘a complex swarm of micro and small subcontractors, promoting job announcements, temporary work agencies, and even illegal or paralegal networks of recruitment’ (Monteiro, 2014; Monteiro and Queiros, 2016).
The involvement of multiple actors automatically bears the risk of passing on costs to the detriment of workers, certainly if user undertakings do not control the recruitment. The labour relation becomes blurred in the triad of user undertakings, intermediaries and workers, and social responsibility is transferred down the chain (Andrees, 2021). The ILO has signalled that labour recruiters operate in a world that is half-light and half-shadow. Fraudulent go-betweens who charge migrants for access to non-existent jobs occupy the criminal end of this range (Gordon, 2015).
A survey of the EU Fundamental Rights Agency identified various combinations of recruitment practices as typical situations of involvement of agencies in (severe) labour exploitation of migrant workers. The report concluded that ‘there seems to be no correlation between type of recruitment and the different situations of labour exploitation, or the severity of the exploitation experienced,
A study of Lithuanian workers recruited to work abroad investigated which recruitment practices facilitate exploitative labour situations abroad (Sirgedienė, 2020). According to the study, there was a minimal risk that employment services provided by public agencies (or by EURES consultants) lead to exploitative labour situations abroad. The Lithuanian public employment services functioned as well-developed and secure channels to be used to find a job in the EU and EFTA Member States. However, risk levels increased for job seekers who used employment services offered by private agencies. Private recruitment firms cooperated with temporary employment agencies in the destination country in exploitative schemes designed to attract Lithuanians abroad. Agencies were active for a certain period and disappeared leaving no chance to trace their activities. Job ads on the Internet containing convincing information and appealing communication of go-betweens influenced the positive decision of job seekers. Based on the demand of businesses, the temporary-work agency selected the target group and administered the labour relations. The private temporary agencies and representatives of temporary agencies or businesses in the destination country were often interrelated. This enabled the actors to control workers during their recruitment and exploitation. At the same time, it made it difficult for migrant workers to file complaints and for law enforcement to disclose and investigate cases. Recruitment through this channel facilitated the shadow economy and the exploitation of migrant labour abroad. Although the workers had the right of free movement, the researchers found cases of job seekers having to pay recruitment fees to the agencies or having their fees collected by the employer upon arrival at the destination. The exploitative conditions included excessive working days or hours, low or no pay and salary manipulation, no contracts and social security and poor living conditions. The temporary agencies and user undertakings in destination countries applied coercive measures to control workers around the clock, such as the confiscation of documents, debt bondage, withholding of salaries, isolation and surveillance, threats and violence and forcing into illicit activities and tasks. After terminating such exploitative situations, workers ended up with debts and health problems, or sometimes with a damaged reputation. They often believed they were not entitled to assistance or to report exploitation to the police in the host country.
Other research reveals that, for instance, in Bulgaria, besides the about 120 licensed labour mediators for employment abroad, unlicensed agencies also operate (GEMM, 2016). Unregistered agencies usually recruit people for low qualified jobs and no decent working and living conditions. Most workers who do agree to go abroad and choose such agencies are low-skilled, unqualified workers not having the knowledge nor the funds to research and check the legal status of the agencies. Many Internet sites also offer work placements. The same source talks about practices by private employment agencies and employers who have contributed to the creation of a specific niche of local labour markets, characterised by bad working conditions and elevated levels of alienation. Misleading information by international recruitment intermediaries also happens with more qualified, yet still vulnerable workers such as nurses, through misleading information that promises healthcare jobs but then provides dependent care ones on arrival (Lozano et al., 2015).
German counselling offices found that workers often lived in social isolation during the months of work in Germany contributing to non-wage-based control (Initiative Faire Landarbeit, 2024). They came to Germany via intermediaries and in many cases lived in remote group accommodation without secure access to the Internet to communicate with their families in their home countries. The counselling offices were confronted with mobile migrant labour controlled by a temporary agency whilst in fact belonging already for a long time to the core personnel. The agency received 400 euro per person from the employer and further fees from the workers, and threatened the user company to ‘pull its own people out’ if the firm intended to hire them directly. Similar experiences in the German meat processing industry led in 2021 to a ban on agency work in that sector (Ban et al., 2022).
Conclusions and recommendations
The multiple range of evidence presented in the article indicates that the recruitment process influences the sorting, and thereby segmentation into vulnerable positions, of migrant workers. Moreover, certain recruitment channels are frequently associated with risk of abuse. User undertakings’ demand plays a key role in the development of the flow (Thompson et al., 2012). Research has illustrated the frequently resulting workers’ dependency, and analysed how recruitment industries are regulated and operate, the sectors they recruit into and the types of workers they recruit. The ILO has pointed to persisting governance gaps in the regulation of both national and cross-border recruitment, enforcement of provisions and sanctioning and in the coverage of the entire recruitment chain, including labour intermediaries and sub-contractors. In practice, most applicants for recruiter licenses receive them without further monitoring (Martin, 2017). Even in situations of a regulated and licensed industry, non-compliance is often reported but rarely prosecuted, and sanctions are not deterrent. The current hostile migration environment with inaccessible appeal opportunities and high thresholds for juridical services in host countries exacerbates this development. It often results in making migrants more vulnerable without tackling any of the structural preconditions of abuse.
Therefore, more focus on effective regulation of the recruitment activities is needed. The EU Employment and Recruitment Agencies Sector Guide has listed best practices aligned with international norms and standards. However, the regulation of recruitment remains a patchwork with too many holes and too weak enforcement (Gordon, 2015). Martin (2017) has outlined the major dimensions that can serve as building blocks for a better regulation agenda: dissuasive penalties; incentives for compliance; and the establishment of public agencies that can compete with private recruiters.
On these lines, some recommendations from a draft report of the European Parliament (2025) initiated in the summer of 2025 and adopted in the employment committee on 13-12-2025 are worth considering. The draft stresses the need for a comprehensive European approach to labour exploitation in general, and to abusive forms of subcontracting and labour intermediation in particular. It identifies high labour intensity combined with reliance on long and complex subcontracting chains and the presence of abusive labour intermediaries as a risk factor for labour exploitation. The draft report proposes among other things that labour intermediaries operating in the EU must be covered by registration and licensing schemes and, in line with ILO Convention No 181, all fees or costs to workers charged by labour intermediaries, directly or indirectly, should be prohibited.
It is not the purpose of this article to deliver a comprehensive catalogue of regulatory measures, but some policy recommendations can be drawn from the available knowledge. a. A policy that aims to tackle the dependency of migrant labour must systematically check the recruitment and the effects of the externalisation of labour by user undertakings, and that temporary recruitment channels are only used where an objective temporary need exists, so that structural work leads to structural, direct employment. b. User undertakings should develop Human Resource policies that apply for all workers, independently from the juridical status or the type of hiring and recruitment. Equal access to training and career guidance is needed to counter migrant segregation in low-skill jobs (Cremers, 2023). c. Most national regulations governing labour recruitment apply only to private recruitment agencies that operate from inside their territory and do not consider transnational actors. Already in 2017, the European Parliament recommended, in order to effectively tackle fraud and abuse, that licensing or registration schemes must be applicable to foreign temporary work agencies as well (European Parliament, 2017). d. It is necessary to separate labour inspections and control from immigration enforcement and to create protective reporting and inspection pathways that allow workers to feel safe to report abuses regardless of their juridical status. e. Better regulation of temporary agency work in the EU needs to restrict the use of that form of work, as legally justified on grounds related to the protection of the workers concerned, to ensure the proper functioning of the labour market and to the prevention of abuses (Directive 2008/104/EC, art. 4). Member States can consider bans on the use of temporary agencies, as Germany did in the meat processing industry (Ban et al., 2022).
The European Union, in the current volatile political climate, appears to make both steps forwards and backwards in terms of social regulations, as with the vicissitudes of the Directives on Adequate Minimum Wages and on Corporate Responsibility Due Diligence. Business interests are still very influential in Brussels, as is the belief in unfettered markets. On an issue as topical and pressing as labour migration and exploitation, though, a political majority to constrain the most disruptive forms of recruitment appears, in the light of the recent research discussed here, realistic and urgent.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank the Department of Private Business and Labour Law for the continuation of the cooperation.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Declaration of conflicting interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.