Intra-EU Mobility : The Employment and Welfare Experience of Temporary EU Workers in the United Kingdom

Abstract

This article explores the mobility pathways of temporary EU workers and the implications that transnational temporary mobility has on their labor market outcomes and access to social rights and benefits. The experiences of temporary EU migrants working in the UK show that despite the narrative of the borderlessness of the common European labor market, access to host countries’ labor market and welfare is shaped by their employment status and welfare eligibility criteria that produce worker precariousness. Temporary EU workers’ experiences are characterized by employment insecurity and unequal access to labor and social rights, effects which might increase since the UK has left the EU.