Legal Frameworks

The aim of the chapter is to explore migrants, refugees and asylum seekers’ integration legal framework in the European labour markets across several European countries, in the light of the notion of legal status, in order to critically discuss if and how the very way in which TCNs’ legal statuses are designed by current migration law is intended to foster integration or, on the contrary, tends to create legal peripheries. Legal peripheries are not understood, for the purpose of current analysis, as geographical spaces, but rather as immaterial spaces where the actual enforcement of rights is at odd with the formal recognition of equality, dignity and fundamental rights. Legal peripheries are immaterial spaces defined by a series of unbalanced relations that cripple the empowering and emancipatory potency of rights and of the rule of law. As it will be discussed, for certain categories of TCNs, the peripherical legal status has a “ghetto effect” and does not allow the person to move from periphery to semi-periphery and centre, creating a vicious circle of legal rights downsizing. Under this perspective, the chapter intends to contribute to existing scholarship on migrants’ integration in the labour market by advancing knowledge on legal statuses, a subject that has generally attracted scant attention coupled with labour market integration.