If you want to work in the EU, skills, and qualifications may be enough to get a visa. But it’s a different story for those without sought-after skills, for whom one of the few legal routes is with a temporary permit for seasonal work.
Germany has a history of recruiting foreign workers going back as far as 1955. Policies have changed over the decades according to political and economic circumstances, but today the focus is on attracting people with a high level of skills or qualifications.
In March 2020, new rules on skilled workers’ immigration came into force in Germany, providing more opportunities for qualified professionals from outside the EU. There is the EU Blue Card, a residence title that enables university graduates to work in EU countries. And for highly-skilled migrants who don’t yet have a job offer in Germany, the Job-Search visa allows people to come and spend up to six months looking for work, as long as they have a university degree enough money to support themselves.
Few Opportunities
The outlook is very different for people from outside the European Union who don’t have skills or university degrees.
“For unskilled workers, there are hardly any legal work possibilities for people to come,” says Matthias Mayer, an expert on immigration at the Bertelsmann Stiftung, a think tank in Germany. “If there is a need for unskilled workers, it’s mostly met in terms of immigration from European Union migrants,” he explains.
Mayer adds that opportunities exist in Germany for unskilled workers with a job offer from the Western Balkan states such as Serbia, Albania, and Bosnia. The so-called “West Balkan Regulation,” introduced following the 2015 influx of asylum seekers to the EU, aimed to pressure the asylum system. It has now been extended to 2023, partly because of current demand in some German labor sectors, including construction.
Limited Deals with Third Countries
There is some demand in Germany for seasonal workers, for example, in the agricultural sector and, before the advent of COVID-19, in the tourism industry. So far, these jobs have mostly been filled by workers from other EU countries.
Recently, as fewer people from within the EU have taken up these opportunities, Germany has begun looking outside the bloc to recruit seasonal laborers under bilateral agreements. However, only a deal with Georgia has been concluded, while talks on further agreements are taking place with countries such as Moldova, Albania, and Bosnia.
The German government is also in the process of initiating bilateral agreements aimed at recruiting people in sectors that are in high demand in Germany, like the health and aged-care sectors, Mayer explains. In some cases, these agreements will include placement in vocational training programs in Germany, he adds. In other words, they will benefit some people who do not yet have professional qualifications.
Seasonal work presents opportunities but also dangers. Despite efforts by trade unions and others, seasonal laborers are exploited and even trafficked in some cases. There have been several reports of trafficking among berry pickers from Thailand in recent years, for example. Simultaneously, cases have also been reported in Poland, Portugal, Greece, and Italy, where migrants with no papers working in the agricultural sector are especially vulnerable to various forms of exploitation.