Like a magician's trick, the myth of Europe's “formality” hides the vast informal migrant labor behind key sectors. Despite their essential roles, especially as revealed during the pandemic, migrants are consistently scapegoated to distract from labor shortages. Yet, their precarious status remains largely unchanged. This unfolding three-act story (pre-pandemic, pandemic, post-pandemic) shows how the trick can be exposed.

First Act: A pre-pandemic scene in “Europe’s Farm”

In 2019 a couple of dear quantitative social science colleagues visited me during my anthropological fieldwork in Almería, Spain. We spent a couple of hours driving around the so-called "Europe’s Farm," a 450 square kilometer area of greenhouses dedicated to growing vegetables. I described the shantytowns where migrant workers from Africa live, the state’s struggle with informal labor, and the role of Eastern Europe in sustaining the workforce. However, they were more interested in going to the nearby mountains to take a picture from above: these greenhouses are very photogenic—as evidenced by their appearance in the opening scene of the dystopian movie Blade Runner 2049.

A picture from above does not capture the full scope of the essential labor that sustains this agro-industry. Seen from below, the patchwork schema reveals the invisibility of a labor force that feeds Europe from the south. My research focused on Romanian migrants in Spain who, since the 2000s, have played a key role. Their migration was unplanned by governments or companies, and many worked informally before Romania joined the European Union in 2007, after which formal labor integration followed (Fradejas-García, Molina, and Lubbers 2023). They provide seasonal workers via transnational social fields, but the labor shortages are also eased by the exploitation of many African migrants as in/formal laborers. Thus, representing different levels of precarity, migrant populations are “solving” Almería’s labor shortages through their transnational mobilities and in/formal labor. How can we expose the tricks that hide how labor shortages are solved?

Second Act: Pandemic trajectories of informality through Morocco and the Canary Islands

One year later, in March 2020, the pandemic reached me living in Rabat, Morocco. Suddenly, all informal work was banned in the city and the streets emptied of informal vendors, among them transiting African migrants. According to the International Labour Organization, nine out of ten people are employed informally in low-income countries, while in high-income countries the percentage is 13.5 percent. In Morocco and other West African countries, most precarious migrants in transit to Europe were left behind without any support and were somehow "invited" to leave. Some took the risky Atlantic route to Spain’s Canary Islands where one in four migrants goes missing.

One year later, in 2021, I was conducting ethnographic work on a proclaimed "migration crisis" in the Canary Islands (Fradejas-García and Loftsdóttir 2024). In what seemed like a self-fulfilling prophecy, migrants in transit who had been stranded by the pandemic in West Africa attempted to reach the Canary Islands, with several thousand arriving by boat without authorization. The suffering some migrants go through to reach (and feed) the EU labor market is invisible. Closing the circle, some of these African migrants ended up working in the greenhouses of Almería. Fortunately, most of unauthorized migrants in Europe arrive safely by plane and overstay their visas, working informally without permits until regularized, filling essential labor gaps. How do migrants in irregular situations acquire the formal right to work and thus “visibly” solve Europe’s labor shortages?

Third Act: Post-pandemic scenes of the regularization of (essential) migrant workers

In 2022, a Popular Legislative Initiative (ILP) sought to regularize the approximately 500,000 migrants who are living in Spain without papers. Although they lack official permission to work, many are nonetheless integrated into the labor market, often accepting lower wages. Therefore, regularization would not only grant legal status but also help to reduce their vulnerability to exploitation. The initiative “Regularización Ya,” organized by hundreds of activists and backed by 900 civil society organizations, mobilized 600,000 Spanish citizens to sign a petition in support of migrants in irregular situations, who, despite being directly affected, were not allowed to sign themselves. In a powerful act of resistance and solidarity, these citizens lent their voices to those who had been silenced by the system.

The campaign highlighted five key points: the large number of undocumented people, the ethical issues of their exclusion, the economic and social benefits of regularization, its positive impact on public health, and its common use in other countries (Fanjúl and Gálvez-Iniesta 2022). The campaign succeeded in bringing the ILP to the Spanish Parliament in early 2024. All political groups accepted the ILP apart from the far right, which voted against it. The law began to take shape, but its current status is unclear. Meanwhile, Spain has reformed its immigration rules, though the legal outcomes remain uncertain. Still, the trick of hiding informal labor has been exposed with strong arguments—even as anti-migration policies and rhetoric gain traction amid right-wing consolidation.

The myth of formality in Europe as a place of rules and respect for the law is contradicted by the exploitation of millions of workers. This myth hides labor shortages and denies migrants' rights twice: it blocks work permits and ignores the informal work it forces them into, enabling exploitation. Common practices of informal employment based on race, origin, gender, age, religion or class dictate that they occupy—even when working formally—the jobs and sectors that native Europeans usually do not want, thus unearthing the dual labor market theories.

The audience—here represented politically by critical citizens with their signatures in favor of regularization—reveals the magician’s trick: while migrants-as-scapegoats are pulled out of a hat with anti-migrant arguments, the magician’s subtle gesture with the other hand hides what cannot be shown: namely that Europe and its reproduction rests on in/formal labor requiring migration. Campaigns both secure migrant regularization and expose the false evidence of “anti-immigrant magicians.” We need to go beyond the spectacular images from above to take a closer look at the hand gestures these magicians use to hide who is really doing the work and under what conditions.