The context to challenging discrimination against ethnic minorities and migrant workers at work

Over the last decade trade union responses to racism and discrimination against ethnic minority and migrant workers have often reflected two competing discourses, one promoting anti-discrimination legislation and the other, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment. The Racial Equality Directive was adopted in 2000 to enter into force in 2003. Yet 11 September 2001 unleashed a tide of anti-Muslim prejudice and 10 years later, in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis, a study by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found that the Directive had had little impact on underlying levels of racism. In this article initial criticisms of the Directive are revisited. The impact of rising numbers of migrants and of slightly higher public intolerance of the ‘racialized outsider’ are considered. The article argues that racism is playing a growing role in justifying unequal treatment in employment. Its presence makes the solidarity needed to ensure proper social regulation of the increasingly ‘open’ European economy more difficult to achieve.