Labour Mobility and Informality: Romanian Migrants in Spain and Ethnic Entrepreneurs in Croatia

  1. Polese, Abel
  2. Fradejas-García, Ignacio
  3. Šimić Banović, Ružica
  4. Škokić, Vlatka
  5. Kerikmäe, Tanel
  6. Molina, José Luis
  7. Alpeza, Mirela
  8. Lubbers, Miranda J.
  9. Camerani, Alberica
Revista:
Politics and Governance

ISSN: 2183-2463

Ano de publicación: 2022

Volume: 10

Número: 2

Páxinas: 279-292

Tipo: Artigo

DOI: 10.17645/PAG.V10I2.5166 GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAcceso aberto editor

Outras publicacións en: Politics and Governance

Obxectivos de Desenvolvemento Sustentable

Resumo

Post-Weberian definitions see the state–individual relationship as a “do ut des” one. The state grants protection, education, medical care, and its citizens contribute labour, compliance, and taxes. When this does not occur, it is generally accepted that the citizens are deviating from state goals. However, there are cases where lack of compliance stems from the fact that society members do not feel protected by formal structures, and they rely on informal ones to replace, supplement, or even compete with state institutions. The starting point of this article is that this lack of support may result from enhanced labour mobility (and migration) across Europe, and may enhance the creation and persistence of informal practices. Taking advantage of two case studies, Romanian migrants to Spain and ethnic entrepreneurs in Croatia, we observe how governance is constructed and provide two novel interpretative frameworks. First, we explore the use of informality (informal practices) to suggest that apparently insignificant actions that are repeated routinely and without much thought, are a way to contribute to the construction of the political and that everyday governance should receive more attention. Second, we use this claim to argue that a better understanding of informality can help identify governance areas where interventions are more urgent. These are the spheres of public life where it is possible to identify a larger gap between the wishes of a state and the ways citizens actually act as they informally avoid or bypass its rules.

Referencias bibliográficas

  • Adascalitei, D. (2012). Welfare state development in Central and Eastern Europe: A state of the art literature review. Studies of Transition States and Societies, 4(2), 59–70.
  • Aidis, R., Estrin, S., & Mickiewicz, T. (2008). Institutions and entrepreneurship development in Russia: A comparative perspective. Journal of Business Venturing, 23(6), 656–672.
  • Aligica, P. D., & Tarko, V. (2014). Crony capitalism: Rent seeking, institutions and ideology. Kyklos, 67(2), 156–176.
  • Alpeza, M., Oberman, M., & Has, M. (2018). Small and medium enterprises report—Croatia 2018. CEPOR—SMEs & Entrepreneurship Policy Center. http://www.cepor.hr/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/EN-SME-Report-2018-za-web.pdf
  • Brzozowski, J., Šimić Banović, R., & Alpeza, M. (2021). Overcoming constraints to immigrant entrepreneurship in Croatia: The role of formal and informal institutions. Post-Communist Economies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/14631377.2021.1928825
  • Čapo, J., & Kelemen, P. (2018). The city and international migrants. Institute of ethnology and folklore research. https://ec.europa.eu/migrant-integration/sites/default/files/2019-09/The_City_and_International_Migrants.pdf
  • Centre for Peace Studies, & Impact Hub Zagreb. (2019). Country analysis of self-employment and entrepreneurship initiatives for TCN. BEST.
  • Cook, L. J. (2007). Postcommunist welfare states: Reform politics in Russia and Eastern Europe. Cornell University Press.
  • Courtois, S., Werth, N., Panné, J. L., Paczkowski, A., Bartošek, K., & Margolin, J. L. (1997). Le livre noir du communisme: crimes, terreur et repression [The black book of communism: Crimes, terror, and repression]. Robert Laffont.
  • Davies, T., & Polese, A. (2015). Informality and survival in Ukraine’s nuclear landscape: Living with the risks of Chernobyl. Journal of Eurasian Studies, 6(1), 35–45.
  • Deacon, B. (2000). Eastern European welfare states: The impact of the politics of globalisation. Journal of European Social Policy, 10(2), 146–161.
  • Deacon, B., & Stubbs, P. (Eds.). (2007). Social policy and international interventions in South East Europe. Edward Elgar.
  • De Haan, L. J. (2012). The livelihood approach: A critical exploration. Erdkunde, 66(4), 345–357.
  • Draxler, J., & van Vliet, O. (2010). European social model: No convergence from the East. Journal of European Integration, 32(1), 15–35.
  • Dreher, A., & Schneider, F. (2010). Corruption and the shadow economy: An empirical analysis. Public Choice, 144, 215–238.
  • Elrick, T., & Ciobanu, O. (2009). Migration networks and policy impacts: Insights from Romanian-Spanish migrations. Global Networks, 9(1), 100–116.
  • Esping-Andersen, G. (Ed.). (1996). Welfare states in transition: National adaptations in global economies. SAGE.
  • Eurostat. (2019). Migration and migrant population statistics. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Migration_and_migrant_population_statistics#Migration_flows:_Immigration_to_the_EU_from_non-member_countries_was_2.4_million_in_2017
  • Fenger, H. J. M. (2007). Welfare regimes in Central and Eastern Europe: Incorporating post-communist countries in a welfare regime typology. Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences, 3(3), 1–30.
  • Fradejas-García, I. (2021). Informality on wheels: Informal automobilities beyond national boundaries. Migration Letters, 18(2), 148–163.
  • Fradejas-García, I. (2022). Enchufismo. In A. Ledeneva (Ed.), The global encyclopaedia of informality: Understanding social and cultural complexity. https://www.in-formality.com/wiki/index.php?title=Enchufismo_(Spain)
  • Fradejas-García, I., Molina, J. L., & Lubbers, M. J. (2021). (Im)mobilities and informality as livelihood strategies in transnational social fields. In A. Polese (Ed.), Labour mobility and precariousness: Why informality ends up replacing and supplementing the state for the invisible and the vulnerable (pp. 33–67). Palgrave.
  • Fradejas-García, I., Molina, J. L., & Lubbers, M. J. (in press). Migrant entrepreneurs in the “Farm of Europe”: The role of transnational structures.” Globalizations.
  • Fradejas-García, I., Polese, A., & Bhimji, F. (2021). Transnational (im)mobilities and informality in Europe. Migration Letters, 18(2), 121–133.
  • Gill, S. S. (1998). The pathology of corruption. HarperCollins Publishers India.
  • Granovetter, M. (1983). The strength of weak ties: A network theory revisited. Sociological Theory, 1, 201–233.
  • Hacker, B. (2009). Hybridisation instead of clustering: Transformation process of welfare policies in Central and Eastern Europe. Social Policy & Administration, 43(2), 152–169.
  • Hart, K. (1973). Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. The Journal of Modern African Studies, 11(1), 61–89.
  • Hrzenjak, M. (2012). Hierarchisation and segmentation of informal care markets in Slovenia. Social Politics, 19(1), 38–57.
  • INE. (2020). Spain statistics 2020. https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/es/categoria.htm?c=Estadistica_P&cid=1254734710984
  • Ireland, R. D., Tihanyi, L., & Webb, J. W. (2008). A tale of two politico-economic systems: Implications for entrepreneurship in Central and Eastern Europe. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 32(1), 107–130.
  • Jones, R. (2007). People/states/territories. Wiley.
  • Kasza, G. (2002). The illusion of welfare regimes. Journal of Social Policy, 31(2), 271–287.
  • Kets de Vries, M. F., & Florent-Treacy, E. (2003). Roustam tariko (a): Russian entrepreneur. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 27(3), 299–313.
  • Kevlihan, R. (2013). Designing social inquiry in Central Asia: A case study of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Studies of Transitional States and Societies, 5(1), 56–66.
  • Kuznetsov, A., McDonald, F., & Kuznetsova, O. (2000). Entrepreneurial qualities: A case from Russia. Journal of Small Business Management, 38(1), 101–107.
  • Ledeneva, A. (1998). Russia’s economy of favours. Blat, networking and informal exchange. Cambridge University Press.
  • Ledeneva, A. (2008). Blat and Guanxi: Informal practices in Russia and China. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 50(1), 118–144.
  • Ledeneva, A. (2011). Open secrets and knowing smiles. East European Politics & Societies, 25(4), 720–736.
  • Ledeneva, A. (2018). The global encyclopaedia of informality: Understanding social and cultural complexity (Vol. 1/2). UCL Press.
  • Lendvai, N. (2008). EU integration and the transformation of post-communist welfare: Traversing a “quantum leap”? Social Policy & Administration, 42(5), 504–523.
  • Levitt, P., & Lamba-Nieves, D. (2011). Social remittances revisited. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 37(1), 1–22.
  • Manolova, T. S., & Yan, A. (2002). Institutional constraints and entrepreneurial responses in a transforming economy: The case of Bulgaria. International Small Business Journal, 20(2), 163–184.
  • Marcu, S. (2015). From the marginal immigrant to the mobile citizen: Reconstruction of identity of Romanian migrants in Spain. Population, Space and Place, 21(6), 506–517.
  • Migdal, J. (2001). State in society: Studying how states and societies transform and constitute one another. Cambridge University Press.
  • Ministerio de Trabajo y Economía Social de España. (2016). Anuario de estadísticas [Statistics yearbook]. https://www.mites.gob.es/es/estadisticas/anuarios/2016/index.htm
  • Molina, J. L., Martínez-Cháfer, L., Molina-Morales, F. X., & Lubbers, M. J. (2018). Industrial districts and migrant enclaves: A model of interaction. European Planning Studies, 26(6), 1160–1180.
  • Morris, J. (2011). Socially embedded workers at the nexus of diverse work in Russia: An ethnography of blue-collar informalization. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 31(11/12), 619–631.
  • Morris, J. (2014). Moonlighting strangers met on the way: The nexus of informality and blue-collar sociality in Russia. In J. Morris & A. Polese (Eds.), The informal post-socialist economy: Embedded practices and livelihoods (pp. 51–66). Routledge.
  • Morris, J. (2015). Notes on the “worthless dowry” of Soviet industrial modernity: Making working-class Russia habitable. Laboratorium, 7(3), 25–48.
  • Morris, J. (2019). The informal economy and post-socialism: Imbricated perspectives on labor, the state, and social embeddedness. Demokratizatsiya: The Journal of Post-Soviet Democratisation, 27(1), 9–30.
  • Morris, J., & Polese, A. (2014). Introduction: Enduring practices, entwined livelihoods. In J. Morris & A. Polese (Eds.), The informal post-socialist economy: Embedded practices and livelihoods (pp. 1–18). Routledge.
  • Mouw, T., Chavez, S., Edelblute, H., Verdery, A., Carolina, N., & Hill, C. (2014). Binational social networks and assimilation: A test of the importance of transnationalism. Social Problems, 61(3), 329–359.
  • Ó Beacháin, D., Sheridan, V., & Stan, S. (2012). Life in post-communist Eastern Europe after EU membership: Happy ever after? Routledge.
  • Peng, S. (2004). Nonlinear expectations, nonlinear evaluations and risk measures. In J.-M. Morel, F. Takens, & B. Teissier (Eds.), Stochastic methods in finance (pp. 165–253). Springer.
  • Petrescu, A., & Rodriquez, V. (2006, July 2). Los Rumanos ya tienen su propio «SEUR» [Romanians already have their own “SEUR”]. El Mundo. https://www.elmundo.es/suplementos/cronica/2006/557/1151791204.html
  • Polese, A. (2016). Limits of a post-Soviet state: How informality replaces, renegotiates and reshapes governance in post-Soviet Ukraine. ibidem.
  • Polese, A. (Ed.). (2021). Labour mobility and precariousness: Why informality ends up replacing and supplementing the state for the invisible and the vulnerable. Palgrave.
  • Polese, A., Kovács, B., & Jancsics, D. (2018). Informality “in spite of” or “beyond” the state: Evidence from Hungary and Romania. European Societies, 20(2), 207–235.
  • Polese, A., & Morris, J. (2015). My name is legion. The resilience and endurance of informality beyond, or in spite of, the state. In J. Morris & A. Polese (Eds.), Informal economies in post-Socialist spaces: Practices, institutions, networks (pp. 1–27). Palgrave.
  • Polese, A., Morris, J., & Kovács, B. (2016). “States” of informality in post-Socialist Europe (and beyond). Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, 24(3), 181–190.
  • Polese, A., Morris, J., Kovács, B., & Harboe, I. (2014). “Welfare states” and social policies in Eastern Europe and the former USSR: Where informality fits in? Journal of Contemporary European Studies, 22(2), 184–198.
  • Polese, A., Rekhviashvili, L., & Morris, J. (2016). Informal governance in urban spaces: Power, negotiation and resistance among Georgian street vendors. Geography Research Forum, 36, 15–32.
  • Polese, A., Seliverstova, O., Cheshkin, A., & Kerikmae, T. (2020). National identity for breakfast: Everyday practices, food consumption and the construction of national narratives in the Baltics. Nationalities Papers, 48(6), 1015–1035.
  • Polese, A., & Stepurko, T. (2016). Informalität an höheren Bildungseinrichtungen der Ukraine [Informality in higher educational institutions of Ukraine]. Ukraine Analysen, 173, 2–5.
  • Puffer, S. M., McCarthy, D. J., & Boisot, M. (2010). Entrepreneurship in Russia and China: The impact of formal institutional voids. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 34(3), 441–467.
  • Real Academia Española. (2020). Enchufismo. In Real Diccionario de La Lengua Española. https://dle.rae.es/enchufismo
  • Scott, J. (1985). Weapons of the weak. Yale University Press.
  • Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state. Yale University Press.
  • Šimić Banović, R. (2019). Uhljeb—A post-socialist homo croaticus: A personification of the economy of favours in Croatia? Post-Communist Economies, 31(3), 279–300.
  • Šimić Banović, R. (in press). Business survival during multiple external shocks: The case of migrant entrepreneurs and digital nomads in Croatia (Interdisciplinary management research XVIII). Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek; Postgraduate Doctoral Study Program in Management, Pforzheim University; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
  • Šimić Banović, R., Čeh Časni, A., & Vučković, V. (2020). Does the (mis)trust in public institutions lead to greater prevalence of the “economy of favors” in the European Union societies: A business sector perspective. In D. Barković, K. Dernoscheg, A. Erceg, J. Glavaš, N. Pap, B. Runzheimer, & D. Wentzel (Eds.), Interdisciplinary management research XVI (pp. 1151–1167). Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek; Postgraduate Doctoral Study Program in Management Hochschule Pforzheim University; Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
  • Šimić Banović, R., Škokić, V., & Alpeza, M. (2022). Informal networks among immigrant entrepreneurs: Case of Croatia. In A. Polese (Ed.), Informality, labour mobility and precariousness (pp. 95–123). Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Šimić Banović, R., Škokić, V., Vuckovic, V., & Basarac Sertić, M. (in press). Immigrant entrepreneurship and resilience during Covid-19 pandemic: The case of Croatia. In W. Bartlett & M. Uvalic (Eds.), Towards economic inclusion in the Western Balkans: Challenges and opportunities. Palgrave Macmillan.
  • Škokić, V., Lynch, P., & Morrison, A. (2019). Veza: An informal network of tourism entrepreneurs. Annals of Tourism Research, 77, 26–37.
  • Stan, S. (2012). Neither commodities nor gifts: Post-socialist informal exchanges in the Romanian healthcare system. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18(1), 65–82.
  • Stoica, A. (2012). Old habits die hard? An exploratory analysis of communist-era social ties in post-communist Romania. European Journal of Science and Theology, 8, 171–193.
  • Tilly, C. (2007). Trust networks in transnational migration. Sociological Forum, 22(1), 3–24.
  • Vacchiano, M., Martí, J., Yepes-Cayuela, L., & Verd, J. M. (2018). Las redes personales en la inserción laboral juvenil en tiempos de crisis. Un análisis en Barcelona [Personal networks in job insertion among young adults in times of crisis: An analysis in Barcelona]. Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 161, 121–140.
  • van Schendel, W., & Abraham, I. (2005). Illicit flows and criminal things: States, borders, and the other side of globalisation. Indiana University Press.
  • Viruela, R., & Marcu, S. (2015). Estrategias de los immigrantes del Este en España durante la crisis económica [Strategies of immigrants from the East in Spain during the economic crisis]. Publicación Del Instituto Universitario De Estudios Sobre Migraciones, 38, 35–59.
  • von Benda-Beckmann, F., & von Benda-Beckmann, K. (Eds.). (2016). Spatialising law: An anthropological geography of law in society. Routledge.
  • Wanner, C. (2005). Money, morality and new forms of exchange in postsocialist Ukraine. Ethnos, 70(4), 515–537.
  • Williams, C., & Martínez, Á. (2014). Explaining cross-national variations in tax morality in the European Union: An exploratory analysis. Studies of Transition States and Societies, 6(1), 5–18.
  • Wood, G. D., & Gough, I. (2006). A comparative welfare regimes approach to global social policy. World Development, 34(10), 1696–1712.
  • Yalcin-Heckmann, L. (2014). Informal economy writ large and small: From Azerbaijani herb traders to Moscow shop owners. In J. Morris & A. Polese (Eds.), The informal post-socialist economy: Embedded practices and livelihoods (pp. 165–185). Routledge.