Secure Mobility: Uncovering Gaps in the Social Protection of Posted Workers

SMUG will identify gaps and inconsistences between national social insurance and worker protection systems in terms of coverage, rule enforcement, and access, which increase the precarity of mobile workers. Despite improvements in EU rule systems and transgovernmental cooperation, the overall effect of posting has been a haphazard deregulation, with many firms exploiting regulatory gaps. We will conduct biographical interviews with posted workers to see how the interactions between national systems affect their welfare, and catalogue their economic coping strategies.

The project aims to:

1. document the specific forms of precarity experienced by posted workers in the European Union, resulting from their movement between national systems;
2. map the structure of the posted worker labour market, by finding out the factors segmenting it into more and less precarious segments;
3. identify specific rules that might be changed, or practices enacted to better protect posted workers and reduce labour market segmentation; and
4. disseminate these findings and proposed solutions, through direct interactions with social actors, via a transnational workshop, conference, consortium team meetings and published policy documents.