Beadsworth, Jack; (2025) Migrant Labour Law: The Exploitation of Temporary Migrant Workers at the Intersection of Migration Law and Labour Law. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis provides a systematic examination of the relationship between labour law and immigration law with a focus on temporary migrant workers. Its central argument is that the integration of the two fields is so systematic and sustained that it creates a whole new framework of labour regulation based on state control of migrant labour, embodied in a discrete legal discipline that my thesis describes as ‘migrant labour law’. This integration of the two fields produces legal rules that exacerbate power inequalities in employment and creates special vulnerabilities additional to those ordinarily present. A juridical divide is created between temporary migrant workers and citizen workers. The development of this body of law fragments and distorts labour law in the temporary migration context and undermines its worker-protective goals. To develop the argument, the thesis, first, examines the legal construction of the employment of temporary migrant workers. Migrant labour law creates a new form of employment called the ‘migrant personal work relation’ with a unique hybrid legal character of private contract and public immigration status, using private employment relationships of migrants to regulate their public relationship with the state and vice versa. The concept of the employer is also transformed into a tool of immigration control. Constructing employment relationships through immigration status and migrant-exclusionary principles intensifies foundational inequalities of power. Second, the thesis analyses the restrictions placed by migrant labour law on key labour law rights. Unfair dismissal protections, freedom of association, access to justice and state enforcement are used to illustrate how migrant labour law undermines important labour law protections, rendering temporary migrants increasingly vulnerable to exploitation. Finally, the thesis concludes by considering a route for a more coherent and normatively constructive relationship between labour law and immigration law that better protects labour rights and decent working conditions for temporary migrants.

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