Bringing Immigrant Voices into Integration Discourse Experiences of Polish Greenhouse Workers in the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, the government utilizes the labour market position of migrants to determine their degree of integration. Migrants in the low-end sector of the labour market are therefore judged as unsuccessfully integrating, despite the fact that this approach overlooks the structural constraints that migrants face. This research aims to challenge the dominant integration discourse by examining the links between employment conditions and integration processes of migrant workers. Analysing the narratives of Polish greenhouse workers in The Hague/Westland region, this research tries to critically look at the precarious working conditions migrants face under a neoliberal regime and reflect on the effect this has on their integration processes. The migrant workers emerge as complex subjects whose integration cannot simply be measured in terms of their position in the labour market without considering the wider structural context they are embedded in.