Causes and consequences of irregular employment in the F2F sectors

This comparative report presents findings from Work Package 6 (WP6) of the DignityFIRM project, examining migrant employment in Farm-to-Fork sectors across four EU member states: Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Spain. The study analysed the scale, drivers, and mechanisms of both formal and informal migrant employment, with particular focus on working conditions experienced by migrant workers and the long-term structural consequences of labour market informality. The study was based on a firm-level survey of 1,204 small and medium enterprises conducted in Spring 2025, complemented by individual and focus interviews with sectoral stakeholders. The findings show that the employment of foreign citizens in the F2F sectors is not temporary or marginal, but a structural phenomenon.Between 35% (Poland) and 79% (Italy) of surveyed firms employed at least one migrant worker in 2024. In firms with migrants, foreign workers constituted on average one third of the workforce, and a majority in one in five firms.The primary driver of migrant employment is an insufficient supply of native labour, compounded by the need for flexible employment arrangements. Survey and qualitative evidence showed that native workers are unwilling to accept physically demanding, seasonal, or irregular-hours roles, whereas migrants are more willing to accept flexible employment forms, including weekend shifts, variable hours, and non-standard contracts. In Poland, some migrants prefer informal or civil law arrangements to maximise short-term earnings before returning home. Informal employment encompasses a broad spectrum rather than a single practice. Direct survey questions identified non-compliance in firms employing migrants in roughly 10% of firms in Poland and the Netherlands and up to 30% in Spain and Italy.Experimental survey methods suggested higher rates: approximately 31% of migrant-employing firms in Poland and 48% in Spain. The main forms of informality identifiedinclude entirely undeclared employment, most common among undocumented migrants with no legal access to formal employment, and partial under-declaration of hours, wages, or contributions while maintaining a formal contract as legal cover. Other situations that favour non-compliant practices relate to the abuse of civil law contracts and B2B arrangements, used especially in Poland to reduce employer costs while circumventing employment protections, as well the intermediation of temporary work agencies which create multi-layered subcontracting structures that diffuse accountability for working conditions.