Stéphanie Blokker

Individual Motives & Structural Factors Determining Labor Mobility: Free Movement of Employees Across the German-dutch Border: Fact or Fiction? Stéphanie Blokker

The establishment of the European Union provided the working population with the legal right for mobility. However as the figures from Eurostat show, just the legal right is not enough to support a labor mobility decision, the decision needs to be supported and supplemented with other factors at influence of the labor mobility decision. This research aims at finding out the factors supporting the ultimate labor mobility decision and finding out what factors might negatively influence the labor mobility decision. The decision to commute is supported by individual motives, structural factors and the network effects. These factors are withdrawn from the framework set by Stalker (1994, 2008). Despite the fact that the critical claims for mobility are fulfilled labor mobility figures between Germany and the Netherlands are still low. This makes achieving the Lisbon Strategy of 2000, aimed at making the EU the most competitive economy in the world very difficult. In order to make free movement of persons factual, and create a strong and thriving Europe, one should look at lifting barriers and constraints currently in place.