7. Migration, Trade Unions and the Re-making of Social Inclusion: The Case of Territorial Union Engagement in France, Italy and Spain

As of 2022, the European labour market and employment relationship are developing in highly problematic ways, with many workers increasingly exposed to vulnerable working conditions and employers who do not always recognise employment legislation and rights at work. The question of how trade unions and social organisations reach out to this unprotected workforce and ensure they are informed of their rights is becoming a more challenging task because of the increasingly non-unionised environment as well as hidden areas of work and groups of workers (Doellgast et al., 2018). The way the threat of dismissal is used to undermine workers’ rights, alongside the veil of silence that comes with workers being unable to communicate or follow up on issues such as long working hours, dangerous working environments or bullying management, makes them particularly exposed to exploitation or ‘super-exploitation’ (see Portes Virginio et al., forthcoming). There have been attempts to organise such workers through campaigns and the targeting of rogue employers (Barron et al., 2016). Many trade unions have tried to access such workforces through meetings, support services, the printing of materials in various languages and much more.

Yet, reaching migrant workers, especially if undocumented, and organising them has always been considered to be difficult. In part, this is due to the lack of coherent strategies and a prevalent focus on specific short-term issues without consistent efforts to develop a longer-term relationship between these workers and social or trade union organisations. However, the increasingly flexible and precarious nature of the labour market and the fragmented nature of jobs and occupations, especially those employing migrant workers, create further obstacles for trade union presence and action. Other challenges emerge from the specific needs of migrants, as dependent on their migrant status, consisting of a wide realm of non-work-related issues that facilitate the exploitative use of these workers by employers. Their legal status in the host countries in some cases and social forms of discrimination can contribute to this insecurity. Such vulnerability has become even more evident during the Covid-19 pandemic. Migrant workers, in fact, have been among those ‘key’ workers more exposed to the virus but also among those in the most uncertain precarious conditions due to the increasing unemployment, ban to international travelling and a difficult access to support, such as housing and health services for instance, in the host countries.

Trade unions are caught between different roles and functions in terms of how they represent workers (Hyman, 2001), including migrant workers. There is always a tension between different approaches and whether trade unions engage with the state, employers or groups of workers themselves as well as whether they actually are based on direct forms of activism or the provision of support services. Much depends on the context of the industrial relations system and the traditions and policies of migration that sit within them (Marino et al., 2017; Connolly et al., 2019) and, therefore, the chapter will outline core developments in terms of union strategies and shifts across Europe (see also Bender, 2023, this volume).

After such discussion, the chapter will focus in on France, Italy and Spain. It will look at how local spatial engagement and a local presence has been developed to engage increasingly exploited groups within migrant communities. Through these forms of local engagement, trade unions in these countries address migrants’ social rights more broadly and offer practical support which is increasingly relevant not only in times of crisis, as during the Covid-19 pandemic, but more generally in consideration of the rather widespread progressive reduction of migrant rights (civil, social and political) in the host countries (Hollifield et al., 2014). In Italy and Spain, the specific form of engagement through local centres has built on the territorial dimension of trade unionism that, in southern European countries, has historically flanked and complemented the industrial and workplace structures of the labour movement. In France, however, there was a degree reticence about building support structures and separate sections, especially at the local, territorial levels of the union. The three national cases look at a specific set of unions that have, in general, a similar class-based and to some extent social discourse and background (Hyman, 2001), but that have been attempting to accommodate new forms of migrant voice and support mechanisms. Such cases are not representative of most European initiatives but are examples of how structural challenges and reflections develop within trade unions as they ‘approximate’ themselves to questions of social inclusion for such constituencies. Not only does this chapter outline aspects of these operational activities and their significance for a debate on social inclusion, but it also surveys their problems and limitations as the nature of migration has increasingly changed amid worsening labour conditions and greater tensions in the political context. What is more, there are new voices and actors linked to, and within a range of, migrant communities that also have significant implications for the way the politics of social inclusion is re-shaped as well as the way trade unions need to engage locally, specifically in relation to migrant communities (e.g. Nachemson-Ekwall, 2023, this volume).

Past research on trade union engagement with migrant workers has widely underlined how labour organisations have historically displayed a rather hostile, even exclusionary, attitude towards migrant workers. To a large extent, this has been due to the perception that migrant workers undermine labour market conditions and the rights of native workers, representing a threat for labour organisations themselves and bargaining structures (Castles & Kosack, 1985). The assumption that migrant workers are a ‘reserve army’ also explains the rather widespread efforts by trade unions to resist liberal migration policies, which is another rather common issue across national contexts (Penninx & Roosblad, 2000). In the course of time, however, trade unions have slowly started displaying a more inclusive approach to migrant workers for a variety of reasons. In some contexts, for instance, the increasing presence of migrant workers in the national labour market has been sufficient to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the rights of these workers based on arguments such as international solidarity or human rights. In other contexts, trade unions have considered the increasing presence of migrant workers as an opportunity to strengthen union membership by recruiting these ‘new’ groups of workers (Milkman, 2006; Martínez Lucio et al., 2017). In some contexts, including some of the so-called old countries of immigration, trade union approaches to migrant workers remain rather underdeveloped, with elements of an exclusionary attitude still persisting (for an overview see Marino et al., 2017).

Union approaches to the representation and inclusion of migrant workers vary strongly across countries, reflecting the specific economic, social and political contexts, as well as factors related inherently to trade unions and migrant workers. In general, the literature underlines how union engagement towards migrant workers can develop through universalistic stances (representing migrants as workers) or through particularistic stances (representing migrant workers as migrants). In the first case, trade unions generally try to include migrant workers within the existing structure and represent them through existing strategies and tools but without varying them to take in account the specific needs and interests linked to their migrant status. This is often referred as a class-based or colour-blind approach, which results in the inclusion of migrants in so far that the rights and interests of the latter coincide with those of native workers (Penninx & Roosblad, 2000; Bender, 2023, this volume). Some scholars refer to this as ‘subordinated inclusion’ (Mulinari & Neergaard, 2005), underlining the limited extent of transformational equality in terms of organisational and bargaining structures.

Particularistic stances and strategies, instead, have been developed with the aim of collating and representing the specific interests and needs of migrant workers. These attempts would result in a transformational effort in terms of structures and representative action in unions. Examples are widely documented across countries, including initiatives aimed at reaching out to migrant workers and unionising them. Specific actions, like the translation of union material into different languages and the provision of training to migrant workers, are rather widespread (e.g. Heyes, 2009; Perret et al., 2012). Some actions are more specifically focused on increasing union voice and participation into union structures through, for instance, the establishment of migrant advisory bodies and the provision of support to self-organised groups. Some scholars underline how the mere presence of these bodies is still not sufficient to determine effective inclusion, since the extent to which these bodies are linked to the organisation and have effective power in influencing union decisions must be taken into account (e.g. Marino, 2015). In terms of representative strategies, research highlights union efforts to include special claims in the company level (and more rarely sectoral level) collective bargaining (Marino, 2012; Tailby & Moore, 2014). These claims, including, among others, longer holidays or leave of absence for administrative reasons (e.g. related to renewing work permits), were successfully included in some negotiations, although examples remain rather limited. In recent times, ‘inclusive’ collective bargaining is occasionally being linked to union attempts to extend existing protections to migrant workers in ‘difficult’ contexts (Berntsen & Lillie, 2016; Wagner & Resflund, 2016), taking a rather class-based approach, thus characterised by the aforementioned limitations.

Another set of special interventions, less documented within the academic literature, concerns social and citizenship rights of migrants. The representation of these rights is defined as a pre-condition to achieve full inclusion (Marino, 2012), but it is often disregarded in the formal union debate since it is not considered as a domain of union action. In this field, union action is rather varied in terms of levels and areas of interventions. Several examples relate to initiatives at national levels on issues like fights against racism and discrimination, policies related to family reunification and the rights of undocumented workers (e.g. Barron et al., 2016). Other examples are found at territorial levels and are related to union support on practical matters related to the social status of migrants, including the renewal of residence permits, family reunifications, as well as access to both health care and housing. In some contexts, services are developed in a rather structured and systematic way, a result of specific factors and conditions, as we show in the next sections. However, examples of a more informal engagement with social or citizenship rights, on a more voluntaristic and ad-hoc basis, are present in several contexts.

In the following sections, we look at examples of union engagement with migrant social rights and forms of union territorial presence and specific organisational representative strategies. We argue that, due to the changing context within which trade unions are embedded and operate, these forms of engagement are becoming more and more central in representing the rights of precarious and migrant workers despite the emerging challenges that we also consider below.

One innovative element in the debate on migration and trade unions is the emergence of an interest in the territorial dimension of the latter’s engagement. The precarious and fragmented nature of work common to various groups of migrants inherently limits their access to stable workplaces and structures, within their organisations, to raise concerns and develop some type of participative mechanisms. Much depends on the nature of employment, the sector and the employer. The over-representation of migrants in labour-intensive sectors like agriculture, hospitality, individual transportation and similar (Kazlou & Wennberg, 2023, this volume), along with the prevalence of small- and medium-sized firms and the increasing presence of platform-based employers—provides scarce opportunities for a sustained dialogue on working conditions with their employers (McDowell et al., 2009). Much is also due to the role of the state—through complex visa and regulatory systems—that sustains the employment of specific groups of migrants, often regardless of skill levels, within quite unstable, vulnerable and undocumented forms of work (Anderson, 2010).

This has led to a growing interest in the use of forms of organising such workers and of generating points of access to them that focus on local non-workplace centres or structures within trade unions (Holgate, 2015). Within the United States of America (USA), the role of community unionism and worker centres has been seen to be at the heart of organising, providing spaces for immigrant communities who have not been able to access the more organised or regulated parts of the labour market and, indeed, the established industrial relations system (Fine, 2007). Although many of these centres are organised by third actors such as social movements and religious organisations beyond the scope of the established trade union movements (Nachemson-Ekwall, 2023, this volume), there is generally much interest in such approaches within the labour movement. In fact, the notion of the community and of mobilising on working conditions through campaigns within communities is at the heart of a prevalent school of thought within the new wave ‘organising’ literature in the USA. McAlevey (2015) argues that it is essential to locate mobilisations and campaigns on worker rights within a ‘bottom-up’ perspective that locates itself within community dynamics, politics and its ‘leaders’. This also leads to the need to understand how migrant workers in such sectors use different forms of spaces—local, community and virtual—for their activities and activism on work-related issues (Roca & Martín-Diaz, 2017; Roca, 2020). This is vital to the way worker rights in precariously employed communities can be developed and voice mechanisms articulated.

However, in some cases, we see that trade unions manage to organise across these spaces by virtue of their pre-existing organisational structures: those with a tradition of active territorial (regional or city) structures that parallel their industrial, sector structures are known to use these local spaces to develop supportive strategies and services for migrant communities. This is the case in the three countries under analysis—France, Italy and Spain—which all present consistent and continuous union engagement with migrant social rights along a territorial dimension. This analysis is based on empirical data that was collected by the authors during the course of different research projects and interactions with trade unions and migrant communities.

The data on the Spanish case mostly relies on a wider project on the Netherlands, Spain and the UK, which consisted of over 150 interviews with trade unionists and workers, among others. The Spanish part of the research covered a selection of cities in the centre and north of Spain (Madrid, Toledo, Valladolid, Cuidad Real and Oviedo): it consisted of visits to trade union centres and over 50 interviews with their staff and the relevant union between 1998 and 2012. Data on the Italian case are drawn from doctoral research carried out between 2005 and 2009 on Italian and Dutch trade unions and consist of over 20 interviews with Italian trade unionists at different levels, plus analysis of trade union documents and participant observation. This data is supplemented by interviews carried out within a three-year ESRC project (2012–2015) comparing Italy, the Netherlands and the UK. The data from France draws on ethnographic research and interviews since 2003 on French trade unions from ESRC-funded doctoral research (2002–2008) and British Academy-funded research from 2017–2018. The observations include the permanence (advice surgery) for undocumented workers organised by the Confédération Genérale du Travail (CGT—General Confederation of Labour) in the Paris region and interviews with key actors involved in the movement.

Despite differences in terms of immigration history, with Italy and Spain being more recent countries of immigration than France, the three national contexts present similarities in terms of migrant presence within the national labour markets. Migrant workers, in fact, are overrepresented in the most exploitative niches of the labour market as result of both the high demand for migrant labour in the wide irregular and underground segments (e.g. Reyneri, 1998) as well as the restrictive and highly bureaucratic nature of the regulation of immigration common to the three countries. Even when documented, migrant workers tend to be employed in sectors like construction, agriculture, domestic work and hospitality, all characterised by seasonal, temporary, short-term jobs as well as by a high level of turnover. These conditions have not allowed trade unions to develop the stable and structured workplace relations with migrants that is typical of other sectors. This has required the trade unions to diversify their strategies by focusing not only on trade union presence in the workplaces but also within specific territorial areas. Starting from the 1990s, union presence at the territorial level has increasingly become an important reference point for migrant and vulnerable workers in all three national contexts.

In Spain, trade unions developed a network of information offices and centres in virtually every major city. In particular, the Comisiones Obreras (CCOO—Workers Commissions) and the Union General de Trabajadores (UGT—General Workers Unions) established these structures in the union’s local city and town offices, linking them to their general local roles (Martínez Lucio & Connolly 2012). Similarly, in Italy, the three main union confederations started establishing local offices already in the mid-1980s to respond to the increasing demand for services by migrant workers in the North of the country where the number of documented migrants was greater. The Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro (CGIL—Italian General Confederation of Labour), the most representative Italian Confederation, in particular, established a widespread network of local Uffici Immigrati or Centri Immigrati (Immigrant Offices/Immigrants Centres) within the territorial units of the trade union (the so-called Camere del Lavoro).

In both Italy and Spain, the role of these structures has been to act as a first port of call for immigrants in relation to work- and other social-related concerns. There are many immigrant centres and law firms focused on these types of activity, but none can compare to the sheer extent and breadth of the union network—something that is unusual in most European nations. A range of individuals have been employed in such centres. Although these are not immigrant-led offices, they may have trade unionists involved from an immigrant background (Martínez Lucio et al., 2013). In Spain, there could be up to half a dozen people working in one capacity or another, although numbers vary between offices. Services are free to migrants and do not require union membership, although they became an important channel for unionisation in both countries since migrants often joined the organisation following union support.

One feature of this new form of engagement with immigrants is that the state provides a wide range of funding for such resources. This allows trade unions, which are identified as being a key part of the provision of such services, to develop trade union-oriented information and a strategy of support centres more generally. Such centres provide a range of information services in relation to employment, citizenship, social rights and housing—among others. In Italy, these offices help with applications for work permits and entry visas, renewal and duplication of residence permits, family reunification, asylum applications, as well as mediation with local authorities and the police. Following the 2002 amnesty for irregular migrants, CGIL worked on the regularisation of foreigners, handling bureaucratic requirements and offering legal services to migrants when employers refused to regularise them. In 2006, an agreement between the Ministry of the Interior and the trade union devolved responsibility for the regularisation procedure and defence of migrants’ social rights to the Istituto Nazionale Confederale di Assistenza (INCA—National Confederal Institute of Welfare Care) of the CGIL. From then on, the work of these offices increased progressively.

The unions were expected to keep clear records of their activities, and these data provide evidence of the importance of such interventions. In 2006, for instance, 27,200 legal cases were initiated by the Camera del Lavoro in Milan (which, at the time, had a foreign population of 170,000 residents); 37 percent concerned work permits; 22 percent residence permit renewals, family reunification and asylum applications; 6 percent concerned individual problems and were resolved with the help of a lawyer; 15 percent involved mediation with municipal offices; and 20 percent the provision of general information. Among CCOO offices related to migrant workers (Centro de Información al Trabajador/a Extranjero/a, CITEs), some local offices attended to at least 3000 individuals a year. As worker centres they were mainly information-based in their approach to attending to immigrants. They open a file for each worker, logging it on a main server so the worker can return for further advice; this is then stored centrally. In comparative terms across Europe, the experience of the CCOOs and the UGT’s developments in this area were accepted as a leading benchmark and good practice at the time.

In contrast to the structures set up specifically to deal with migrant workers in Italy and Spain, there was resistance to establishing any form of separate structure or service for migrants in France before the late 2000s. Following the French tradition of republican assimilation, unions developed a ‘universalist’ approach to representation. Even when establishing an informal structure in favour of the discriminated fringes of the population (see below), their strategies remain imbued with this universalist or class-based approach: workers are workers, not specifically precarious migrant workers (Tapia & Holgate, 2018). The unions focused on anti-racist and discrimination campaigning and on supporting migrant workers through training and rights awareness rather than specific workplace/industrial organising strategies to achieve recognition or collective bargaining (Tapia & Holgate, 2018, p. 200).¹

While the CGT union had historically supported undocumented workers’ campaigns (Siméant, 1998), it had never engaged in the systematic representation of individual rights and interests of undocumented migrants. It also had not specifically worked to increase membership or access to decision-making processes within the union among migrants. The CGT’s strategy towards undocumented workers evolved noticeably in the late 2000s. This development occurred gradually, triggered by strikes initiated by undocumented workers (Connolly & Contrepois, 2018). Migrant workers find it difficult to integrate within the existing company and territorially based structures² as their extreme precariousness not only means that they change occupation regularly but that they are also very geographically mobile. Hence, the CGT considered changing the existing provisional structure into a national-specific structure for these workers, where they would remain until they become established in a particular company or economic sector. This was the subject of much intense debate in the confederation, and there was resistance to creating any kind of national formalised separate structure for migrant workers (Contrepois, 2016).

In the CGT, the ‘collectif confédéral migrants’ was set up as a form of national structure at the end of the 2000s. It was led by a French national union officer in charge of migrant workers and clandestine work. The aim of creating a specific nationally based organisation was to maintain contact with precarious and/or undocumented migrant worker members, characterised by not just high levels of geographic and job mobility but also, above all, a high degree of precariousness.

Strikes occurred in sectors like construction and hospitality, where unions were weak or non-existent. The mobilisation and lobbying eventually led to two new circulaires, in 2010 and 2012, clarifying the processes and establishing criteria for the regularisation of undocumented workers. In particular, they designate the number of pay slips that are needed, depending on the length of time in the country. The circulaires facilitate the regularisation of undocumented workers and allow a link to be established between the worker’s real identity and his or her fake identity in order to reassign rights to the former. In order to guarantee the application of the circulaire, the CGT made informal links with these workers and then opened a weekly permanence (advice surgery) in September 2014 at the national confederal level in Paris as part of the work of the national collectif confédéral migrants and the territorially based union representing the Paris region.

However, the national migrant collective structure was not seen as an end in itself, but rather a way to integrate migrant workers, with the ultimate aim of linking migrant workers with the traditional professional and territorial structures. Lucie Tourette, a journalist who contributed to a book on the 2008 undocumented workers’ strikes (Barron et al., 2011), shows how, in 2018, a number of the undocumented migrant workers involved in earlier union action found employment in large companies, joining the occupational and territorial structures. Several of them took responsibilities within their company and sector union, based on the experience they accumulated during the undocumented workers’ strikes. When hundreds of undocumented migrants went again on strike in 2018, their delegates, who were either former or existing undocumented migrants, were able to lead the movement (Tourette, 2018).

The new regularisation criteria, which requires undocumented workers to seek regularisation through their local préfecture has shifted the locus of union action and activity towards undocumented migrants to the territorial and local level, with a greater need to have local union expertise to compile and process individual dossiers of undocumented migrants.

The union strategies described are also characterised by some limits. Certain critical aspects are, to some extent, similar across the countries, pointing to an ongoing challenge with respect to how social inclusion strategies should be structured and developed within a range of organisations and across various levels.

In the case of Spain, there were concerns within the CCOO locally and some activists that there was a need to connect traditional CCOO work into the CITE and the workers they were representing. The CITEs of the CCOO, for example, were not always connected to, or responsible for, broader social activity, coalition building, or communication strategies with the local immigrant groups. This was driven mainly by the immigration departments of the unions themselves and those coordinating some of the offices in question. Hence, the actual service provision element was sometimes separate from the union’s broader immigration-related strategies. In the geographic areas studied, links with organised immigrant groups were sporadic, as far as the unions were concerned, due to the problems of sustainability that such groups had. This varied according to the extent and politics of different immigrant communities. In some cases, there was an acknowledgement that the service had become more detached. In 2009, the CCOO began to fuse its immigration section into its employment section, which led to a joint department at the national and regional levels—although this mirrored developments in certain state departments. This was seen as a vital step for integrating the issue of immigration into the mainstream of the union’s work. There were also discussions around building a more proactive network of CITE activists throughout the country with the aim of using it for information gathering and as a link to the immigrant population. Thus, this question of fusing the community dynamic into broader strategies around social inclusion and union activism is a challenge, even if the experience of information centres, like those in Spain, is viewed as one of the most elaborate in Europe. For the UGT, this was a bigger problem, with their migrant worker offices being considered to be part of the servicing logic of the union. Relevant activists in the specific regional union structures were, for example, concerned with the way local regional leaderships were increasingly disconnected from the local dimension and community dimension of the union, where once they would have visited local sites more often. There was a concern that such centres did not consistently connect in representative terms with broader migrant workers’ voices, even though, over time, such offices have evolved around broader issues.

In the Italian case, although the importance of migrant offices in defending migrants’ social rights was recognised across the entire union, the emphasis on service provisions was often a source of concern by some parts of the union. The most radical critics considered these bodies as service providers unable to carry out any representative function for migrant workers and likely to hinder their active participation as well as their identity-based adhesion to the trade union. Some interviewees declared that the people working in such offices were regarded not as trade unionists but more as civil servants who viewed migrants as customers rather than workers. Furthermore, concerns were raised in relation to the fact that these bodies were the only ones dealing with migration issues, resulting in a general disinterest and lack of commitment on such matters by other structures within the trade unions. This concern is especially expressed by those who consider these offices as provisional structures designed to be mainstreamed once the migrant issues were fully included in trade union culture and everyday work. In both national cases, the economic crisis caused by the 2008 financial crisis and the worsening of labour market conditions is creating more difficulties for trade unions in relation to the provision of special services (De Luca et al., 2018). The scale of the resources spent on migrant workers issues might become very difficult to justify in a moment of decreasing resources and worsening of the social and economic climate.

In France, the servicing of undocumented migrant workers through the provision of support for regularisation represented a clear shift in the strategy of the CGT, which had hitherto avoided a servicing approach. The fact that the regularisation cases had to be dealt with at an individual and at a local level provided both opportunities and challenges for the CGT. Undocumented migrant workers pushed the unions to go further, to call for nationwide amnesty campaigns for undocumented migrant workers, rather than the cumbersome, bureaucratic and individual approach at the local level. These workers even staged demonstrations against the CGT in the Paris region. The challenge was also to make sure that the relevant and necessary expertise in the territorially based union structures is there to deal with the undocumented workers’ cases for regularisation.

Irrespective of these strategic and political challenges, this aspect of trade union intervention has been one of the most significant in the EU not only because it has provided important support on practical matter in a context where other institutional support has been absent, but also because it contributed to raising the visibility of trade unions among migrant workers. It also contributed to building the perception of trade unions as ‘allies’ in a context which often perceived as indifferent if not hostile. This has positively influenced the unionisation of these workers.

The development of a community-facing agenda based on local structures and offices which invite workers in to discuss and seek support has forged a series of debates about the role of union structure. This dimension, in fact, is becoming more important following the rise of flexible jobs since it is increasingly concerning vulnerable and precarious workers not necessarily with migrant background, in difficult and hard to reach segments of the labour market. The increasing fragmentation of work and the exploitative nature of working relations, in fact, is pushing trade unions to provide an alternative to working places as spaces for the socialisation and the representation of workers, even in national contexts with a well-established union presence.

The challenge in terms of inclusion is the extent to which these structures have been able to move beyond the provision of services (promoting social inclusion more widely), deepen their political significance and constitute a channel for migrants’ involvement and participation in the unions (promoting inclusion in the labour movement). The cases considered, in fact, underline how these structures are established and run by trade unions as well as how these work in line with trade unions’ views and established guidelines. While they might be called to coordinate and develop specific policies and initiatives, their influence on union decision making is often rather low. Furthermore, as already stressed, these bodies were not established by migrants but rather for migrants, although they often employ unionists with migrant or equality backgrounds. In some cases, as for instance in Italy, these territorial offices co-exist with (industrially based) migrant self-organised bodies established to increase the voice and influence of the migrant constituency within the union. Although the relationships between territorial and sectoral-based structures have showed some divisions, they have also facilitated the emergence of a network of migrant activists able to cooperate and coordinate on important matters.

The provision of representation and defence of rights other than industrial ones (social or citizenship rights for instance) is relevant not only in terms of supporting vulnerable workers but for trade union renewal: it brings to the fore trade union roles as social and political actors, something that is increasingly part of the industrial relations debate. Therefore, whilst much is to be said about the use of social media, the importance of locally embedded facilities remains important. Although the current context and the Covid-19 crisis put a lot of pressure on the ability of trade unions and other social organisations to develop these resources, there are still lessons to be learnt.

The union engagement with the territorial and spatial dimension is a good example as to how social inclusion strategies evolve and are contested even within specific dimensions. It is not just a debate about where to focus organisational attention and resources (workplace strategies, community strategies, employer relations social dialogue and others) but also about how the dynamics of change and forms of contention affect each individual aspect. The local territorial space in many countries is less developed, given the industrial nature and workplace focus of their union activities. Yet, in the examples given here, there is a rich heritage of engagement at the level of the locality and a territorial dimension that has helped shape forms of intervention and support at a level appropriate for more vulnerable migrants. This dimension allows workers who are not always employed in stable workplaces and employment to be supported (through advice, activism and other forms) in local communities. The Covid-19 pandemic has contributed to the need to underline the importance of this dimension and of a wider union engagement at the local level. It requires a broader reflection on the role of unions as social actors as well as on the way initiatives and instruments are to be developed to support migrant and other vulnerable groups of workers within local communities.

However, this dimension itself is subject of contention, as the question becomes to what extent service provision linked to these initiatives have been hierarchically driven as a strategy or have been inclusive of migrant workers in terms of decision making (engaging them, for example, in broader debates within the union). Therefore, this means that we need to view trade union approaches to social inclusion as a space where various interventions and debates take place based on the identity of the union, the overall heritage of its approach and the nature of the workforce it is attempting to involve. Yet, how these are linked to broader emancipatory politics and visions of social inclusion is a critical question.

Further, and of general relevance to all the above cases, is the rise of the gig economy and new forms of work that tend to generate the need for more agile or flexible forms of mobilising and organising. These do not necessarily fit the forms of more institutionalised organisation socially and spatially, even though public space is important for these new dynamics. Much of this critical view points to the emergence of different local spatial strategies that may not be fixed in terms of specific physical centres: hence alternative approaches may need to be considered in terms of more informal public spaces along with social media when it comes to the gig economy (Cant, 2019; Geelan, 2021).

The nature of employment in such sectors also points to a new range of more flexible and independent forms of worker organisation that organise more directly and where public space is key to social encounters and protests (Alberti & Peró, 2018; Peró 2020). These new dynamics see local space in broader and less constrained terms: as more socially diverse, ranging from the use of existing available venues to online forums. However, one should not underestimate the initiatives and extent of collaboration between some of the more established unions and these new organisational forms (Smith, 2022). There is also the presence of increasingly intersectional-based movements and politics that urge us to view migrant workers’ needs and interests as deriving from the intersections of a broader range of statuses and identities. This perspective questions homogenous solutions that often ignore questions of gender and age, for example. It also encourages the building of more inclusive and democratic union processes with respect to diversity (Alberti et al., 2013).

These limitations have been exposed as well by the way migration has become a more sensitive political issue pushing the use of such offices into a broader role. The way unions offer services to—or represent—migrant workers is increasingly challenged by reactionary and xenophobic political organisations and interests, which contributes to increasing tensions between workers and their representative organisations. Xenophobic attitudes emerging on some occasions within the union rank and file constitute an important challenge to the more progressive aspects of the trade union movement and generate uncertainties in the way union strategies will develop.

The chapter shows how the question of trade unions and how they align to the needs and dynamics of migrant communities requires us to evaluate the different industrial, spatial and social strategies that trade unions develop. It is not simply a question of ‘responding’ or ‘fit’. The chapter also illustrates how the territorial and spatial dimensions are key to the organising, representing and supporting migrant workers in labour markets that are increasingly decentred and fragmented as well as in times of crisis. However, there are tensions between supporting and engaging or including migrant workers through such structures. There are further tensions in terms of how they provide spaces for broader worker activity beyond immediate questions of informational and technical support. To this extent, they reflect some of the broader dynamics and ironies of social inclusion strategies that call forth the need for more innovative approaches to questions of agency and structure as well as novel and direct forms of migrant inclusion in the processes.