This article aims to improve our understanding of the industrial relations dynamics that drives cross-country differences in the expansion and containment of precarious migrant labour. To this end, it investigates the roles of industrial relations actors, labour market regulations and collective bargaining. It compares the differential reliance on temporary and migrant labour in the food (and meat) sectors in the Netherlands and Austria, two countries with a strong corporatist industrial relations tradition. The analysis draws on desk research and interviews with trade union representatives, inspectors, employers, works councillors and migrant workers. The findings highlight the importance of regulations regarding flexible employment, the strength of sectoral industrial relations institutions and collective bargaining, and enforcement mechanisms at the workplace to explain different outcomes for migrant workers: namely, a sectoral migrant labour regime that enables an extensive and exploitative use of temporary migrant labour in the Dutch food sector and a limited one in the Austrian food sector.
