A Study of Temporary Labour Migrants' Experiences of Working Conditions and Social Protection in Finland Part 1

Temporary labour migration has become an attractive resource in several low paid jobs such as in agriculture, service and construction sector. In this new situation different institutional stakeholders have expressed diverse standpoints. For employers –both on the national and the transnational level – the opening up national labour markets has entailed new possibilities of making profit. Some trade unions have raised concern of social dumping of working conditions by the use of migrant workers –especially by migrants staying only short periods in Finland. The role of the state is more ambivalent than that of employers/trade unions. A best case scenario is a “triple win situation” in which the host country, the sending country, and the temporary labour migrant benefits from the process.
The focus in this study is on the temporary migrants’ experience of social security and of working in Finland, such as: what kinds of experiences do these migrants have? Have they met specific problems related to temporariness? How do the migrants look for information and what kinds of opportunities do the migrants have to acquire information? The guiding assumption is that insecurity and possible precarity related to the fragmentation of work life is particularly dominating in the lives of temporary labour migrants. For example, cultural and language features together with lack of other Finland specific features may increase experiences of insecurity in the lives of temporary labour migrants.