Is money always the most important thing? Polish construction workers in Ireland

Abstract

Migrant workers in the construction industry are often taken to be motivated purely by short-term financial gains. The dramatic influx of Polish workers into the Irish building industry during the Celtic Tiger boom thus appears a clear case of economic migration. A qualitative panel study (2008–2013) which interviewed Polish construction workers through the boom and subsequent recession reveals a more complex picture. Migrants’ initial move to Ireland was sometimes motivated partly by non-financial concerns such as the desire for new experiences. When the construction industry crashed, many migrants did leave Ireland, but interviews with them back in Poland showed that family issues such as children’s education had been important. Many migrants remained in Ireland, sometimes facilitated by access to unemployment benefits. The Polish construction workers included some with technical and professional qualifications and these appear more likely to have stayed in Ireland. This decision often involved re-training for a new career and was motivated by new social relationships and a perceived better quality of life. These findings suggest that the issues raised by contemporary lifestyle migration are relevant even for some construction workers.

Keywords

Ireland Polish migration interviews motivation labour

Introduction

The construction sector has always had a strong tradition of employing migrant workers. For example, in some EU15 countries, many workers on construction sites are now immigrants from Central and Eastern European countries. This can be explained by a number of factors including the immobility of the product, the labour-intensive work and the fragmented nature of the production process. Even if components of a building are manufactured elsewhere, most of the work in this sector needs to be done on the final site (Bosch and Philips, 2003). At the same time, the seasonal and cyclical nature of the industry often requires greater employment flexibility (Meardi et al., 2016). Engaging foreign labour in construction sites is therefore often a strategy adopted by employers as it provides such flexibility while lowering the costs (Fellini et al., 2007; Meardi et al., 2016; Sommers and Woolfson, 2008). Furthermore, many of the jobs in construction involve physical and often dangerous work at the bottom of the labour market structure that may not be attractive for the members of the indigenous population (Ive and Grunberg, 2000). Finally, compared to immigrants in other sectors, immigrants in construction are especially likely to have arrived in their destination country as labour migrants rather than through routes for family members or asylum seekers (Cangiono, 2014). Migrants working in the construction industry, in other words, appear to be especially focused on earnings. Their aim is to maximise their income within a short time frame; their centre of interest remains their country of origin; most earnings are sent home, either as remittances to support their family or as capital to be accumulated for a specific project (Caro et al., 2015; Datta, 2009; Trevena, 2013). Equally, when there is no work for them, these migrants will leave. This paper, however, aims to problematise this perception. First of all, we argue that the motivations behind migration are sometimes more complex and can involve more than just financial calculations. Secondly, we question the seemingly over-simplistic account of migrant construction workers as those located at the bottom of the occupational structure, especially within the free intra-European movement. Finally, we explore the stay and return issue in the context of the Irish economic boom and subsequent recession.

The paper begins with a review of the literature on ‘economic’ migration. In most European Union countries, many workers in construction are labour migrants. This is partly because of the nature of the industry, but these constants are, however, mediated by specific national institutional features, so that across Europe the proportion of migrants in the construction industry workforce is quite variable.

As the second part of the paper shows, at first sight, the recent large-scale entry of Polish workers into the Irish construction industry appears as a clear case of unskilled labour migration driven by short-term economic considerations. However, as we also show, this migrant labour force was more differentiated, including many skilled craft workers and a small number of non-manual workers. As described in the next section of the paper, we used a Qualitative Panel Study (QPS) to explore the migrants’ motivations and in particular to study if and how these changed over time. We used our interviews to assess the motivations of those apparent target earners who arrived in Dublin during the construction boom of the Celtic Tiger; we suggest that more was involved than just target earners. The final empirical section of the paper examines the motivations and experiences of those who left and those who stayed in Ireland after the boom collapsed. Once again, not even construction workers can be understood as simply driven by short-term economic considerations. The concluding discussion uses this limiting case to challenge the simplistic division between ‘economic’ East–West migration and ‘lifestyle’ migration within Western Europe. Indeed, this has implications for the very contemporary discussion of free movement of ‘labour’ within the European Union today.

Mobility for work: Economic migrants, target earners and high-skilled professionals

Migrants are often classified according to the reason they move. Those relocating to another country primarily to work are thus usually referred to as ‘labour’ or ‘economic’ migrants. From the push and pull model (Lee, 1966) perspective, individuals make decisions about migration based on different employment opportunities or wage differentials. Therefore, for example, Neoclassical Economics views migrants as rational actors, whose decision about movements are based on cost–benefit calculations and whose focus is on maximising of the lifetime earnings (Sjaastad, 1962; Torado, 1976). These migrants are focused on finances and thus will remain in the host country as long as their stay is financially valuable. The ‘New Economics of Labour Migration’, on the other hand, perceives labour migrants as ‘target earners’ who move for shorter periods of time and are more likely to return once their targets are achieved (Stark, 1991; Stark and Bloom, 1985).

Furthermore, traditional theoretical and empirical accounts of economic migration also tend to differentiate between ‘high’ and ‘low’ skilled migrants. These accounts are often focused on so-called ‘global cities’, places that attract workers located on the top and on the bottom of the labour market scale (Nagel, 2005; Raghuram and Kofman, 2002; Sassen, 2001). Those on the top are highly specialised and highly paid, moving through ‘official’ channels, including formalised recruitment or transfers within multinational companies (e.g. Beaverstock, 1994; Carr et al., 2005; Iredale, 2001; Mahroum, 2001; Salt, 9192; Skeldon, 2008; Stalker, 2000). They are also part of the ‘creative class’ (Florida, 2003) for whom international mobility constitutes a path to advance individuals’ careers. Those at the bottom often have a shady legal status and are often located outside of the host country social structure (MacKenzie and Forde, 2009; Sassen, 2001). As opposed to those at the top, they constitute a classical example of a ‘target earner’ whose goal is to accumulate financial capital that can be used in their home countries (Piore, 1979). With this assumption, these migrants are also more likely to accept jobs characterised as ‘3D’: Dangerous, Dirty and Difficult (Dickens and Lang, 1988), for example in the construction sector.

More recent accounts, however, have been critical of such rigid classifications and dichotomies (see, for example, King, 2002, 2012). First of all, boundaries between different categories can be blurry and difficult to define. For example, a migrant working in a low-skilled job can be actually highly educated, while the mobility of an individual undertaking a highly skilled position can be driven by financial gains (e.g. Kaczmarczyk, 2006; Mahroum, 2000). Secondly, the polarisation between high- and low-skilled migrants ignores the space in the middle. As argued by Smith and Favell (2006: 25), this is due to the ‘clichéd opposition of elite and ethnic migrants in a polarised global economy’. This may no longer be applicable in the context of intra-European mobility and migration within the ‘middle ground’ (Scott, 2006). As a result of these critiques, there is now a growing number of studies exploring the ‘middling’ category of migrants whose place on the labour market is neither at the bottom or at the top and whose motivations are also not purely career or finance driven (e.g. Conradson and Latham, 2005; Kennedy, 2008; Scott, 2006). Moreover, the international mobility of workers within the European Union is also now analysed in terms of the quality of life or lifestyle migration (e.g. Boyle, 2006; Benson, 2010; Benson and O’Reilly, 2009; Crowley-Henry, 2010). There is also attention to the young (Western) European professionals, who flow between different spaces within the Old European Union, and whom Favell (2008) described as ‘Eurostars’ in Eurocities.

Nevertheless, these accounts tend to focus on the ‘Old’ EU nationals moving around Western Europe. This mobility has been facilitated by the EU’s freedom of movement which ensures that EU citizens can be mobile within the EU without any visa or work permit tying them to a particular job (Wickham, 2012). Meanwhile, East–West migrants are still often perceived as ‘economic’ migrants or ‘target earners’ working in low-skilled jobs below their qualification level (e.g. Cook et al., 2010; Currie, 2007; Datta et al., 2007; Fitzgerald, 2007; Janta, 2011; MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). Quite often, this movement is analysed in the light of the neoclassical approach or the New Economics of Labour Migration (Kurekova, 2010).

Nevertheless, the quality of life and lifestyle migration element has not been completely absent from the literature on Polish migration, even before the 2004 Enlargement. For example, Koryś (2003), in her typology of Polish migrants, identified a category of young people, mainly students and young college graduates, who work abroad in the secondary sectors of the host country labour markets and who claim that their main goal is to live somewhere ‘cool’ and ‘fashionable’ regardless of having a lower skilled job in a bar or a restaurant. Furthermore, Sliwa and Taylor (2011) pointed out that some Poles coming to the UK are also influenced by a factor that she calls ‘enjoying life’. Finally, Parutis (2011) examines the labour market outcomes of Polish and Lithuanian migrants in the United Kingdom and argues that these migrants do not fit into the simple ‘low’ and ‘high’ skilled dichotomy. They should be therefore analysed in the context of the ‘middling’ migration approach.

Following these few examples, our analysis will therefore further problematise the divisions between ‘West–West’ and ‘East–West’ migration. As we aim to demonstrate, this mobility has shifted beyond the simplistic financial calculation rationale. We will also argue that some Polish migrants, even those working in the traditionally ‘low’ skilled construction sector, can actually be categorised as ‘middling’. Finally, we challenge the neoclassical approach which assumes that migrants return home when employment the host country is no longer attractive (or no longer there); equally, as our analysis will show, the New Economics of Labour Migration ‘target earner’ concept may no longer be applicable.

Methodology

For the purpose of the following analysis, we combine statistical data provided by Polish and Irish sources, as well as semi-structured interviews conducted as part of our QPS on Polish migrants in Ireland. By using existing statistical sources, and by providing an overview of the Polish and Irish economies, we demonstrate how the movement between the countries initially appears as a straightforward case of labour migration. As well as Eurostat data, the key sources here are the various national censuses of Poland and Ireland and the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) in Ireland. In order to compare the construction industry workforce before and after mass immigration to Ireland, this paper uses micro-data from 2002Q2, 2007Q2 and 2010Q2. While the QHNS does not identify separate nationalities for most migrants, the category of ‘New Member States’ (NMS) is used. A further limitation is that the NACE construction sector classification used in the QNHS data does not include some professionals working in construction-related jobs since they are classified as working in other sectors (e.g. architects in design offices, civil engineers working in planning).

The difficult economic situation in Poland on one hand and the booming labour market in Ireland on the other certainly contributed to the decision to move. However, individuals’ motives and their understandings of their actions cannot be simply deduced from the aggregate situation. Motives are complex and often multi-faceted and indeed may well change over time. It is highly plausible that all this applies especially to migrants. Accordingly, central to our study of Polish migration to Ireland after 2004 was what we termed a QPS. The original study (Krings et al., 2013) included a panel of 22 Polish migrants whom we interviewed six times between 2008 and 2010; in 2012–2013, we were able to re-interview all but one of our respondents (Wickham et al., 2013). Once the individuals were selected, they remained in the study, whether or not they actually remained in Ireland. If they were in Europe, we conducted face-to-face interviews; respondents who had moved outside Europe were interviewed by phone. The QPS thus generated a total 153 separate interviews in seven waves. Respondents were working in four different sectors (hospitality, construction, financial services and IT). For this paper, we utilise the interviews with those working in construction broadly defined, whether as manual workers or as technical and professional workers. By interviewing respondents over a prolonged period of time, we were thus able to track changes in their life and monitor how economic and life-course changes influence their trajectories, and how their own stories change throughout time.

Post-accession movements between Poland and Ireland

At the time of EU accession in 2004, the unemployment rate in Poland was at 19% compared to approximately 9% EU 25 average and slightly below 4% in Ireland (Eurostat, 2015). Furthermore, unemployment amongst young people (25 years old and younger) was relatively high with 39.6% of this age group out of work (Rajkiewicz, 2005). Wage differentials between Poland and the EU15 were also significant. In 2004, the statutory minimum wage in Poland was €189.98 per month compared to over €1,000 in countries like France, the Netherlands, the UK or Ireland (Funk and Lesh, 2005).

After EU enlargement in 2004, there was mass emigration from Poland, so that by 2012 somewhere around one million Poles were living outside the country (GUS, 2012). Of the existing member states initially, only Ireland, Sweden and United Kingdom fully opened their labour markets to NMS nationals immediately after enlargement. Poles going to other EU countries were still operating in the grey areas of labour markets often with a ‘semi-legal’ status: they had entered the country legally, but had no legal right to work. Such restrictions in most of the EU15 labour markets probably ‘diverted’ many Polish migrants towards the UK and Ireland and away from other destinations (Baas and Brücker, 2012). The UK became the most popular destination for Poles: for the first time in recent history, Polish immigrants to the UK outnumbered those going to Germany. Even more interesting, almost overnight Ireland started to attract a vast number of Polish migrants. While the 2002 Irish Census counted only 2000 Poles living in the country, by 2008, according to the Polish Central Statistics Office, there were 200,000 Polish nationals living in Ireland (GUS, 2010). Most Poles were relatively young and well educated: 86% were aged between 18 and 44 and two-thirds had at least upper secondary level education (CSO, 2007a, 2007b). They thus differed from those who continued to migrate to ‘traditional’ destinations such as Germany or Italy and who represented older and less educated cohorts (Okólski, 2010).

Certainly, it was not only the opening of the Irish labour market that contributed to this movement. In 2004, contrary to Poland, Ireland was booming. Having earlier experienced large outflows of migrants seeking employment abroad, from the mid-1990s onwards Ireland had become a country of net immigration. As a result of economic growth, unemployment rates in Ireland fell from approximately 16% in 1993 to 3.7% in 2001. This so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’ economy experienced severe shortages in its labour market. These shortages occurred not only in low-skilled jobs, as there was also a demand for higher skilled workers in some industries including in construction (Forfas, 2005).

In the new century, the Irish economic boom turned into a property bubble (Wickham, 2012) and employment in construction accelerated. By 2005, employment in construction accounted for 12.5% of total employment, one of the highest proportions within the European Union (CSO, 2006). At its peak in 2007, there were well over quarter of a million working in the industry – more than three times the number employed in construction in 1993 and 50% more than the 2002 level (Table 1). The new jobs were gradually filled not only by Irish workers but also by migrants who initially came mainly from outside the EU and then, after 2004, from the NMS of the EU.

Table 1.

Construction industry: nationality 2002 and 2007.

	National composition^a		Male participation rate^b
	2002 (%)	2007 (%)	2002 (%)	2007 (%)
Irish	96.5	82.8	17.2	21.9
UK	2.4	2.6	17.4	20.8
Rest EU15	0.3	0.7	5.3	8.2
NMS		10.9		33.4
Other	0.8	1.6	6.3	16.2
Total	100.0	100.0
(N)	182,100	281,800

NMS: New Member States.

All currently at work in construction.

Men working in construction as proportion of total at work males in national group.

Source: Own analysis – Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) (QNHS2002Q2 and QNHS2007Q2) accessed via the Irish Social Science Data Archive – www.ucd.ie/issda.

Immigration changed the ethnic composition of the industry almost overnight. Whereas in 2002, 97% of those working in the industry were Irish, by 2007, this had fallen to 83% (Table 1). This brought Ireland rather above the West European norm for the level of migrant employment in construction, but migrants remained less important than in a few other countries such as Spain where immigrants comprised about 25% of the industry (Cangiono, 2014). Equally within Ireland, construction was not so dominated by immigrants as the hospitality sector in which immigrants comprised approximately 30% of the workforce (Krings et al., 2013). Wages in construction remained high: by 2007, the average hourly earnings for all of the construction employees was €18.25 (with the national minimum wage set at €8.30 per hour and rising to €8.65 in the middle of the year) and the wage dispersion was also limited (Bobek et al., 2008). What was extreme, however, was the importance of the industry for immigrant males. As Table 1 also shows, in 2007 over one in five of all Irish men were working in the industry, but amongst male NMS immigrants, the proportion was more than one in three. Of these NMS immigrants, the overwhelming majority were from Poland.¹

Most of these new immigrants working in construction were in manual jobs.² Figure 1 uses QNHS data to show how in 2007 immigrants from the NMS differed from all other national groups in the small proportion in management and professional jobs. Nonetheless, even this source reports about 5% of the NMS workers in construction being in managerial and professional jobs. As already noted, many industry professionals such as engineers and architects as well as some technical workers would be classified as working in other sectors – and during the boom, these included a significant number of Polish immigrants.

Figure 1.

Irish construction industry: occupation and nationality 2002 and 2007.

Equally not all NMS migrants working in manual jobs were unskilled. Firstly, as is clear from Figure 1, most workers in construction are in craft occupations, in other words, in skilled manual jobs. Secondly, NMS (effectively Polish) migrants in construction tended to have a higher level of education than Irish workers in the same jobs. Table 2 shows the proportion of Irish and NMS workers in the main manual occupational groups in construction with ‘high’, ‘medium’ and ‘low’ education. In each occupational group, the NMS workers had a significantly higher level of education. There was a scattering of NMS manual workers with higher education and crucially; NMS manual workers were more likely to have achieved a medium level of education than their Irish colleagues. Thus, 65% of Irish workers in elementary occupations in construction had only basic (‘low’) education, as opposed to only 32% of the NMS workers in these occupations.

Table 2.

Construction industry: nationality, occupation and educational level, 2007.

	Elementary		Skilled trades		Total
	Irish	NMS	Irish	NMS	Irish	NMS
	(%)	(%)	(%)	(%)	(%)	(%)
Low	64.9	31.5	35.7	21	41.8	25.4
Medium	31.4	64.9	58.0	65.6	49	63.7
High	3.8^a	3.6^a	6.3	13.4^a	9.2	10.9
Total	100.1	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0	100.0
(N)	30,865	11,318	143,045	11,743	123,994	25,824

Source: QNHS2007Q2 own analysis.

NMS: New Member States.

Cell count <30.

Importantly, therefore, not all Polish construction workers were unskilled workers filling unskilled manual jobs. As we shall now see, there are other ways in which this migration was not purely a question of target earners earning as much as possible in jobs which, except for relatively high wages, can be characterised as ‘low quality’ or ‘3D’ jobs.

As it will be discussed in the following sections, which draw on the QPS data, wage economic context was an important factor for initiating migration of Polish construction workers coming to Ireland. However, the data also suggest other motivations, such as professional and general life experience. Furthermore, similarly to the quantitative data, our interviews strongly suggest labour market opportunities arising across the occupational scale, especially for those with language or professional skills.

Evidence from the QPS: Coming to Ireland during the boom. From financial reasons to lifetime experience

Not surprisingly, the differences in unemployment rates and wages between Poland and Ireland featured in some of the interviews with construction workers and professionals. An example is the following quote in the first interview with Wiktor,³ a semi-skilled manual worker from Poland:

A: And why did you leave Poland?

G: I think that just like everyone else, because… The matter of wages and life that are offered to us in Poland, it didn’t really make sense to stay there when the possibility of leaving got opened. (Wiktor, construction worker, W1)

Interestingly, it was the better financial opportunities rather than fear of unemployment that seemed to play a more important role for the QPS participants. In fact, all of the participants either had a job at the time of leaving Poland or were recent graduates who had never tried to secure employment back at home. Furthermore, some of the interviewees also had non-economic motivations for relocating to Ireland. Maciek, a young Polish architect who came to Ireland in 2004, explained his motivations in the following way: ‘Well, the finances, that’s the first thing… And, I don’t know, I was thinking about catching this kind of experience, you know… abroad. Because they were saying that it is good to have that kind of experience’ (Maciek, architect, W1).

As illustrated by the above quote, financial reasons played an important role for this participant. Interestingly however, he was also motivated by the professional prospects available in Ireland. The decision about leaving was therefore not influenced by financial incentives alone. While it could be argued that getting professional experience abroad can result in financial gains in the future, Maciek’s was not focused on immediate financial gains (and therefore differed from a typical ‘target earner’).

As it will be discussed in the following section, our interviews showed that finding relevant employment in the construction sector was relatively easy for our participants, especially if they had qualification within this field. This became an important factor for young graduates who decided to leave Poland due to a lack of adequate career (and financial) opportunities in their home country. Most importantly, with the open labour market, there were also more options available to them, including finding work within their professions with no work permit complications, climbing up the career ladder, or moving between different jobs and sectors.

In addition to career opportunities, some of the participants working in both lower and higher skilled jobs also stated that they left Poland to gain some new life experience. This is how Pawel, a young Polish engineer who came to Ireland with his girlfriend who had a degree in architecture, explained his motivations:

I left Poland because… I was terribly tired with Krakow. I couldn’t cope with that. That was the main reason. I wanted to see something new. It really wasn’t about the money, nor that I wouldn’t find a job in my profession. It was rather… to leave, to be able to… If you are young then you have to go somewhere. Later on you may not have a chance.… And maybe, in the second place, for some financial benefits. (Pawel, civil engineer, W1)

As the above quote illustrates, similarly to Wiktor, Pawel’s motivations to leave Poland were more complex and not focused on the short-term financial gain. Quite importantly, it was not only the higher skilled who left Poland for reasons other than purely financial. One of the respondents who found a job in Dublin as a painter and decorator described his reasons for going abroad as follows:

A: So why did you leave Poland?

B:… So I don’t regret that I haven’t done something in my life.

A: Can you tell me something more about it?

B: I had never been outside of Poland before. And if I had settled down I wouldn’t have probably left Poland again. So I wanted to take this opportunity. (Bogdan, construction worker, W1)

While the financial factors clearly played an important role in shaping migration patterns between Poland and Ireland, the above quotes also suggest the emergence of other reasons influencing some of the individuals involved in this movement. These can be categorised broadly as: career motivations, opportunities to learn the language, and experiencing ‘something different’ in life. The first two can still be regarded as ‘economic’ rationales, but can be categorised as long-term investment in human capital, rather than an attempt at short-term accumulation of financial capital. Furthermore, the last reason in particular could be related to the lifestyle factor in the migration process. As discussed earlier in this paper, this aspect of international mobility is usually associated with nationals moving around Old Member States, who are also middle-class, affluent and relatively well-off. Gaining new experience, however, and ‘getting out’ of Poland was also clearly an important factor for some of those who came from Poland to Ireland during the boom. Nevertheless, it needs to be emphasised that, in the case of our construction sector interviewees, this motivation was mentioned as just one of the reasons for leaving home. In other words, motivations were complex and went beyond simple financial calculations; at the same time, anticipation of a better lifestyle was only present in relation to ‘getting out’ of Poland, rather than to specific conditions expected to be found in Ireland. In the later part of this paper, however, we will demonstrate how lifestyle and better social atmosphere became a dominant theme in a discussion about returning to Poland or staying in Ireland.

Working in the ‘Gold Rush’ construction industry

In the previous section of this paper, we discussed how migrants are often classified as either ‘low’ or ‘high’ skilled. As other studies show, migrants often accept low level positions, especially if their status is not legal. On the other hand, high-skilled professionals move between jobs and countries at the top level, and international mobility is often a way to get to the top. However, this no longer seems to be the case for intra-European migrants who are mobile at all levels of the labour market, partially due to the EU’s freedom of movement.

Such freedom of movement also helped Polish migrants to have a wider choice of jobs. Thus, most of our QPS participants reported that they relatively easily found employment in the Irish construction sector. They were not limited to the ‘bottom level’ and worked across different occupations. Those with relevant qualifications were also able to find work within their field. In most cases, these positions were junior and did not offer substantial financial gains; the investment was therefore long term. This was yet another difference between our participants and typical ‘target earners’. However, there was also a very limited notion of aspiration towards the top. Our interviewees were inclined to stay at the middle. This differentiated our participants from ‘typical’ highly-skilled, highly-mobile professionals. Dorota, who worked as a junior architect in a middle-size company, described her attitude in the following way:

M: … Well, the promotion… I would probably get more money, but that wouldn’t change anything when it comes to what I am doing at the moment (…) Nobody calls me ‘well, you are a junior architect and I am the senior architect’. We are the architects and that is it. (…) I don’t perceive it in a different way, not that we are somehow on the ladder, some stepping stone. (Dorota, Architect, W1)

Nevertheless, some were also able to move on from their initial low-skilled jobs, moving either within the industry or into other sectors. One of the QPS participants, Karol, is a good example of how both of these scenarios were possible. He had an unfinished degree in psychology from Poland and moved to Ireland with his girlfriend in 2005. Initially, they wanted to travel so he took on a job in hospitality sector as it offered him a certain degree of flexibility. After a while, he decided that it would also be beneficial for them to build up some savings, so he found work as a manual labourer. Initially, he accepted a low-level job specifically for financial reasons (and because the hours were more stable than in the service industry), but then he was promoted due to his good level of English. This is how he talked about this experience:

Because the money is good. Well that was the only reason, good money. Secondly: it’s a job from – till. You know, you come to work at 7.30 am, you leave at 5 pm, and that’s it, that’s not your business any more. Unless you do the overtime or that sort of thing. And I worked there for 18 months, and I started as a common labour, after probably four months I became not the safety officer, but safety representative, probably that was my to the name of what I did. So I was a person from the crew that was doing the kind of job of safety officer, but it was only at that specific site. Well, so I distributed the tasks: who is supposed to do what, and I was a translator, from English to Polish, from Polish to English, from Russian to English.

(Karol, former construction worker, W1)

In the same interview, Karol also referred to the lower level jobs migrants often undertake on construction sites:

Well, I learn fast, so that was never a problem for me to take the hammer and to hammer the nails or do anything. So well I learned fast and I did all the things and really I didn’t have to do any dumb jobs that are often done in the building sites.

For him, however, this was not the end of his career path in Ireland. After a few months, he decided to look for an office work and was eventually offered a job in the financial sector. The upward movement within the construction industry was thus a ‘stepping stone’ in Karol’s professional life.

Such mobility was possible during the boom when skills were in short supply. However, the situation changed when the bubble burst and inevitably all our participants were affected by the collapse of the Irish construction industry. As will be shown below, some lost their jobs or experienced wage cuts. However, even though the opportunities were often no longer there, not all of them decided to go back to Poland.

Polish migrants in the construction sector during the recession

Just as the Irish boom was a construction industry boom, so the Irish crash was a construction industry crash. The 2011 Irish Census counted almost 130,000 Polish nationals still living in Ireland (CSO, 2012), compared to the peak year of 2007 when the size of this group was estimated at 200,000 (GUS, 2012). Job losses in construction were far greater than in any other sector. Between 2007 and 2010, total employment in the industry more than halved and had fallen to 111,000 in 2010. Recent immigrants were especially likely to lose their jobs, so the proportion of migrants amongst those still employed dropped to 12% (Figure 2). Whereas in 2007 there were 35,300 NMS migrants working in the sector, by 2010 this had fallen to only 8,900 (CSO, 2015). In other words, at least three quarters of those NMS migrants working in construction in 2007 were no longer in the sector three years later.

Figure 2.

Employment in the Irish construction sector, 2006–2012 (‘000s).

This crash in the building industry resulted in vast outflows from Ireland of both migrants and of members of the indigenous population who had previously worked in construction (Glynn et al., 2013). It is clear that most of those migrants who left the construction industry also left Ireland. Of all those immigrants who came to Ireland during the boom, the most likely to leave were young men in construction, precisely those who fit the conventional description of economic migrants, ready to return home (or move elsewhere) when the money dries up. Indeed, all three QPS respondents working in manual jobs had returned to Poland by 2010, whereas of the five who used their professional third-level qualification in Ireland, only one had moved permanently back to Poland by 2013.

However, this picture of construction workers simply following the money needs to be qualified in several different ways. Closer examination of both those who left and those who stayed undermines any explanation based purely on changes in employment levels and relative wage rates.

Firstly, not all construction workers left immediately. Not all migrants lost their jobs, even in the construction industry, although those who remained faced deteriorating wages and working conditions (Krings et al., 2011). As EU citizens, Polish construction workers had not needed to hold any form of visa that linked residence in Ireland to a specific employment: when they became unemployed, many used their entitlement to Job Seekers’ Benefit (the Irish unemployment payment) to adopt a ‘Wait and See’ approach, only leaving when they were sure that opportunities would not improve. For example, Marek, who lost his job as a construction labourer, stayed in Ireland while unemployed for about six months before going back to Poland. This is how he described his approach:

Well, I have been seeing an Irish girl for the last two years… And somehow I don’t really feel like leaving. Because I know how it is in Poland. You know, it is hard in Poland. Even though I have this specific situation as my father has a job for me so it is a completely different level. (Marek, construction labourer, W1)

Secondly, not all of those who left Ireland had actually lost their jobs. Back in Poland, construction worker Wiktor described how he had continued to work in Dublin but in 2012 the family had decided to return in order to ensure that his daughter could easily transfer into the Polish school system (Interview Wave 7).

Thirdly, the small number of technically and professionally qualified migrants were especially likely to stay on. Some stayed within the industry. Thus, several of our QPS participants kept their jobs after the industry crashed; one of interviewees who worked as an engineer was even head hunted by an Irish company. Others with no immediate perspectives of finding employment in Ireland re-trained or even re-invented their careers. Even though their financial situation deteriorated significantly, other factors became of more importance. Natalia, an unemployed architect, started a design course offered for those receiving social welfare payments. This is how Natalia explained her situation:

I was talking with my friends who are looking for a job in Poland and they are saying that it is completely hopeless. I have my friends here, my life… It is hard for me to imagine that I would go to Poland alone and start everything from scratch. Even I Poznan where I went college, I have no friends there. You know, everybody went somewhere or the friendships got apart. So it would be hard. (Natalia, architect, W7)

Pawel who was also an architect, after losing his job decided to further explore what was previously his hobby and tried to pursue a career as an artist (Interviews, W7). As citizens of the European Union, they became entitled to unemployment benefits and thus were not rushed to make a decision about moving.

For such migrants, their decision to stay in Ireland was not related to short-term monetary gains. Some were even offered good employment back in Poland but decided not to move there and instead to pursue other professional paths in Ireland. They also claimed that the reasons to stay were not based on financial factors. In most of the interviews, participants referred to the better ‘social atmosphere’ in Ireland and the lower level of everyday stress; they also had developed extended personal connections in Dublin and were not strongly attached to Poland anymore. Their country of origin was still a nice place to visit, but not necessarily somewhere they wanted to live. In one of the interviews, this engineer romanticised the Polish countryside and different types of activities such as swimming or going to a camp fire. However, she admitted that such activities were not part of everyday life in Poland. Her overall view of the country was rather negative:

On the other hand I do realise…that Poland is a shithole…That in fact nothing is going on over there, and you cannot get anything without having the right connections… And that people have very narrow horizons. Because that’s what they were taught. And it has always been like that. And I was like that as well. Until I left. And at the moment… I am afraid that if I came back to Poland then even if I had a good job or some kind of [my own] business, that even I was doing well financially then… Because what, how often can you go those camp fires or go to the lake or go to the woods? (Dorota, engineer, W6)

‘Narrow horizons’ or ‘a different type of mentality’ were the expressions that our participants often used in relation to Poland. These related to different aspects of the comparison between Poland and Ireland, with the latter frequently described as ‘easier to live in’. Examples included less stress, the lack of social pressure to settle down and that people were kind to strangers whom they met on the street. The notion of a ‘relaxed social atmosphere’ featured in relation to the private sphere as well as to the workplace. As this architect explained in the interview:

[There’s a…] different attitude to work compared to Poland. You know, in Poland there is a lot of … this kind of ‘I am the boss, you are an employee’…And [in Ireland] there’s no such distance and nobody is trying to act in a superior way…Many of my friends are older than me and, you know… Nobody has that pressure inside of them that they have to… have to have a car and an apartment, or husband, wife or kids. (Natalia, architect, W6)

Finally, as time passed, the consecutive interviews with those who decided to stay in Ireland showed a notion of partial settlement. In the first interviews, they had assumed they would be somewhere else in the near future, but by Wave 7 of the QPS, this option was often no longer taken into the account. ‘Putting down roots’ was mentioned by one of our participants; others discussed the fact of having friends or relations in Dublin and thus not being prepared to start over again elsewhere. In other words, after a number of years spent in the country, they had their ‘new homes’ in Ireland, they were often not strongly attached to Poland anymore and they also no longer desired different locations. Labour market conditions, however important for the initial move, were no longer the key determinant of their location.

Conclusions

The construction sector in Europe (and beyond) often relies on migrant labour. Sites cannot be moved overseas and thus employing foreign workers lowers the production costs. At the same time, this industry requires a greater degree of employment flexibility, which seems to be more appealing to migrants rather than domestic workers. In this context, migrants working in construction are often perceived as target earners who accept physically demanding jobs in exchange for (relatively) higher earnings; they also constitute a transient workforce which is likely to respond to downturns by returning home or moving elsewhere.

In the early 2000s, the Irish economy was booming and required workers from the outside. While this was the case across the labour market, the demand for additional labour force in construction was especially high. Gaps in employment in this sector were rapidly filled in by migrants, most notably coming from the NMS, including Poland.

Popular discourse perceived this mobility from the point of view of unemployment levels and wage differentials. While the better employment opportunities, along with higher earnings in Ireland, attracted many Polish nationals to move, such a picture is over-simplistic. As our qualitative study shows, financial motivations were not the only push factors for these migrants and other factors played an important role in initiating the migration process. These factors included better career prospects, the possibility of improving English language competence, as well as ‘experiencing something new’. Migrants were not all moving just to acquire financial capital which could be used at home. They were not yet like ‘Eurostars’ studied by Favell (2008) as better earnings in Ireland still mattered, but some motivations were much more complex than those of the typical ‘target earner’.

Furthermore, our findings also problematise the ‘low’ and ‘high’ skill migrant dichotomy. Our interviewees were not willing to accept work at the bottom of the occupational structure, at least not on a long-term basis. Unlike the ‘target earners’, financial reward was not always decisive in their choice of employment. As the booming construction sector in Ireland created shortages across the scale, they were able to secure more skilled positions, often in line with their qualifications. In their middle-level professional positions or skilled trade jobs, some construction migrants were thus more like the ‘middling transnationals’ described by Conradson and Latham (2005) than either the stereotypical low-skilled or high-skilled migrants of the literature.

Finally, if financial motivations had been most important, the movement between Poland and Ireland would have been expected to continue for a certain period of time, but then should have reversed once the host country experienced a downturn. Thus, it could be assumed that after the collapse of the Irish construction sector most workers would lose their jobs and immediately go back to Poland. While many migrants did lose their employment in the recession, not all of them went back to Poland. Just as some of the motivations for the initial movement were different to those of a previous generation, so too were some of the motivations for staying in Ireland. Furthermore, for some of those whose initial decision to leave Poland was made in financial terms, their subsequent decision to stay in Ireland was based on rather different considerations, most notably what they perceived as the better quality of life and better ‘social atmosphere’.

For all these reasons, Polish construction workers in Ireland cannot all be simply identified with traditional Eastern European economic migrants. Indeed, the deviant cases uncovered by our research show unexpected similarities with Western lifestyle migrants, not just in terms of their migration motivations and migration patterns but also in the extent to which these in turn have been facilitated by their free movement rights as European citizens.

Footnotes

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Data presented in this article were collected as part of Migrant Careers and Aspirations Research Project, which was one of six projects involved in the Trinity Immigration Initiative (2007–2010). The final wave of interviews was conducted as part of the ‘Learning from Poland’ Project funded by the Irish Research Council (2012–2013).

Notes

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