Labour Immigration in the EU Through the Back Door? The Free Provision of Services as a Facilitator of Migration Flows

Abstract

It is quite uncommon to associate migration with the rules on services trade. Indeed, all economic definitions of services insist on their immaterial nature and on the increased possibility of trading them “virtually” over networks or else, without any physical movement of the parties involved. Somehow this “immaterial” nature of services reflects on their providers/recipients which seem to be “invisible”. Even though most services still require the physical contact of the provider with the recipient¹ and, when provided over national borders, do entail migration, service providers and/or recipients are rarely dealt with under the usual migration policy tools. This may be due to the fact that they enter the foreign territory with a specific aim and, once this aim is accomplished, move back to their state of origin; technically they only qualify as short-term non-cyclical migrants and are of little interest to policy-makers. A second reason may be that both service providers and recipients are economically desirable: the former are typically highly skilled and trained professionals and the latter are well-off “visitors”, increasing consumption in the host state. A further reason may be that it is quite impossible to quantify the phenomenon: while it is absolutely impossible to know, at any given time, the number of service providers/recipients making use of their Treaty freedoms (especially given that all tourists travelling in other member states are service recipients),² it is also very difficult to make any approximate estimation concerning the number of workers posted from one member state to another, for the purpose of performing some service.³