Social Partners’ Responses to Employment of Migrant Workers in the course of the ‘Lisbon Strategy’ and the ‘Europe 2020’ : Has there been any change in the social partners’ responses from the Lisbon to the EU2020? The case studies in Sweden, the UK and at

Abstract: The research is aimed at investigating how the common EU social and economic strategies, namely the 'Lisbon strategy' and the 'EU 2020', have been influential as a 'EU incentive' in European social partners having drawn the matter of employment of migrant workers both at Member state level and at European level by looking into their respective changes in responses towards the matter in the course of the two strategies. The research has found that there have been changes made in the European social partners' responses regarding the problematic matter of migrant workers' employment, namely precarious working conditions and lower employment rates than native workers, at all levels. To be specific, the trade unions have begun to emphasize more proactive protection of migrants at workplace than before. However, there is little evidence that it was the result of either the Lisbon or the EU2020. It was rather much more because of the evolving European economic market circumstance that has been getting liberalized more actively as the single market goes on, featured by the problematic side of the increase of posted workers and agency workers. Especially, the research is also aimed at shedding a light on how the Lisbon and the EU2020 have been articulated in the two different economic, social and employment models, namely the Nordic model and the Western model by investigating the Swedish case and the UK case in the study of Member state level social partners.