ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the growing tendency towards an informalisation of work and the economy comes about and the part that migrant labour has to play in this process. The chapter suggests that the erosion of employment conditions is also maintained through larger social and political processes which divide the labour force into different segments or groups, often based on their ethnic or racial origins or the gender differences. It explores the dynamics of informalisation and presented two brief case studies of contrasting European countries, Latvia and Sweden, not because they are in any sense comparable, but as heuristic examples that are empirically illustrative of the growing interconnection of impulses towards informalisation within the European space. Both countries share surprising similarities in terms of the erosion of employment conditions and the decline of secure and properly regulated employment. Informalisation in Latvia has already undermined Latvian trade unions, and the European Court judgment has undermined trade unions and employment conditions in Sweden.
