Marleen van der Haar: Wine and Discussion meeting

Mobility power in the migration industry: Polish workers’ trajectories in the Netherlands

Migration industries are usually researched in terms of facilitation and control of migration and less attention is paid to how migrants as equally central agents perceive, experience and use the different intermediaries during their migration process. In this article, we focus on Polish workers in the Netherlands and their migrant trajectories. Based on in-depth interviews, we study what lived experiences of Polish workers in the Netherlands tell us about the migration industry. In order to understand the Polish workers’ position in the migration industry, we take into account the dimensions of work, accommodation and social life. Our study shows that employment agencies have become to play a crucial role in channelling migrant workers from recruitment to work to accommodation in the Netherlands. This has led – directly and indirectly – to spatial clustering and social bubbles where migrant workers work and live together and social contacts mostly take place with fellow nationals respectively. At the same time, our analysis of the migrant trajectories shows multiple mobility processes initiated and owned by the migrant workers through mobility power, revealing how agency evolves over time and changes the positionality of migrant workers within the migration industry.