ICON S Conference 17 – 19 June 2016 Humboldt University Berlin

29 MIGRATION, LABOUR MOBILITY
AND THE LAW
Panel formed with individual proposals.
Participants Tanja Cerruti
Jihye Kim
Christiano d’Orsi
Erik Longo
Micaela Vitaletti
David Abraham
Name of Chair Erik Longo
Room DOR24 1.606
Tanja Cerruti: The Issue of the Internal Borders
of the European Union between the Need
to Preserve Security and That of Ensuring the
Freedom of Movement
During the last few months, due to the increasing
pressure of migration flow at the doors of the European
Union, several EU Member States decided to
reinforce their borders, reintroducing controls or even
building more or less symbolic walls along them. This
happened not only on the borders between EU Member
and non-Member States but also on those shared by
the EU Member States themselves. The Old Continent
is actually considering the opportunity of temporarily
suspending the Schengen Agreements. On one side
this measure would aim to preserve the security of
European citizens but on the other side it would significantly
impact on their rights, undermining the freedom
of movement on which the EU itself is founded. In light
of the above, this paper will focus on the role that borders
can assume in seeking a balance between freedom
and security. Could their closure really manage to
grant national security and, more generally, could it be
the best tool to front the migration crisis?
Jihye Kim: The Right Against Forced Labor:
Reconsidering the Korean Constitutional Court
Decision on the Restriction of Migrant Worker’s
Right to Change Employers
Migrant workers who entered the Republic of Korea
through the Employment Permit System are not permitted
to change employers at their free will. They may be allowed
to do so only in exceptional cases primarily when the situations
prevent employers from maintaining the employment,
with the limit of three times during their three-year
contract period. The restriction on migrant worker’s right
to change employers has raised serious criticisms being
claimed as a case of forced labor. The Constitutional
Court of Korea had a chance to review its constitutionality
in 2011, however, it treated the issue merely as a restriction
on the migrant workers’ right to get a new job, failing to review
its effect on their labor conditions. This paper argues
that the Court should re-evaluate the nature of the issue
and consider applying the prohibition of forced labor as
a constitutional principle under the Korean Constitution.
Christiano d’Orsi: Freedom of Movement of Persons
in Africa and the Idea of a Common Passport
for the Entire Continent: Where Are We Now?
The paper examines the freedom of movement
in the African context. This freedom is intended as
the right of individuals to travel within the territory of a
country to leave a country and return to it.
Erik Longo: No Visa No Tenancy: The Deputization
of Immigration Control in the UK after the
Immigration Act 2014
In the last five years the British government has
adopted a number of measures to make the strategies
of irregular immigrants more visible in order to
exclude, apprehend and expel them more effectively.
The Immigration Act 2014 represents the culmination
of this period of policy change. It includes measures
that limited the scope of irregular immigrants to manoeuvre
in legitimate institutions of society. Against
this backdrop, this article critically examines the deputization
to landlords of the duty to check the immigration
status of their tenants. The idea beneath these
dispositions is that people who provide goods and
services to migrants, even if private citizens, should
be conscripted in immigration controls on behalf of the
state. By discussing the issue of these unprecedented
strategies, the reader is given a deeper and contextualized
analysis of the goals these policy measures
are meant to serve.
Micaela Vitaletti: Labour Mobility in Europe
A recent American study focused on the number of
manufacturing companies, highlights how labor mobility
constitutes a determining factor in the search for
new employment in an economy what has been called
the “great divergence”, not among urban districts, but
between town and between regions, if not between
States (E. Moretti, The New Geography of Jobs, Houghton
Mifflin Harcourt, 2012). Although this research regards
the US labor market, the considerations contained
can constitute elements for understanding the
unemployment rates also within the Eurozone. The
paper, therefore, taken into account the different Eurozone
unemployment rates, aims at verifying whether
and how EU can change its strategy in order to allow
and encourage workers’ mobility within the European
market to create new jobs.
David Abraham: From Migration Crisis to Immigration
and Integration Regime
This paper examines the breakdown of the categories
with which the post-1945 international regime has
worked: migrant, immigrant, asylum seeker, overseas/
quota/UNHCR refugee, etc. and looks at how those
distinctions might now be more of an impediment
to crisis management than a solution. It then turns
to examine Germany’s citizenship policies and the
ersatz mechanisms it has used since 1945 in lieu of
immigration laws: the massive ingathering of ethnic
Concurring panels 60