This timely book analyses the relationship between trade unions, immigration and migrant workers across eleven European countries in the period between the 1990s and 2015. It constitutes an extensive update of a previous comparative analysis - published by Rinus Penninx and Judith Roosblad in 2000 - that has become an important reference in the field. The book offers an overview of how trade unions manage issues of inclusion and solidarity in the current economic and political context, characterized by increasing challenges for labour organizations and rising hostility towards migrants. The qualitative analysis of trade union strategies towards immigration and migrant workers is based on a common analytical framework centred on the idea of `dilemmas' that trade unions have to face when dealing with immigration and migrant workers. This approach facilitates comparative analysis and distinguishes patterns of union policies and actions across three groups of countries, identifying some explanations for observed similarities and differences. In addition, the book also includes theoretical chapters by expert scholars from a range of disciplinary fields including industrial relations, migration studies and political economy. This comprehensive comparative analysis is an essential resource for academics across a range of disciplines as well as policy-makers, practitioners and organizations involved in trade unions and migrant inclusion and integration.

In The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation, Heather Connolly, Stefania Marino, and Miguel Martinez Lucio compare trade union responses to immigration and the related political and labour market developments in the Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The labor movement is facing significant challenges as a result of such changes in the modern context. As such, the authors closely examine the idea of social inclusion and how trade unions are coping with and adapting to the need to support immigrant workers and develop various types of engagement and solidarity strategies in the European context. Traversing the dramatically shifting immigration patterns since the 1970s, during which emerged a major crisis of capitalism, the labor market, and society, and the contingent rise of anti-immigration sentiment and new forms of xenophobia, the authors assess and map how trade unions have to varying degrees understood and framed these issues and immigrant labor. They show how institutional traditions, and the ways that trade unions historically react to social inclusion and equality, have played a part in shaping the nature of current initiatives. The Politics of Social Inclusion and Labor Representation concludes that we need to appreciate the complexity of trade-union traditions, established paths to renewal, and competing trajectories of solidarity. While trade union organizations remain wedded to specific trajectories, trade union renewal remains an innovative, if at times, problematic and complex set of choices and aspirations.