Impacts of negative labor market experiences on the life satisfaction of European East–West mobile workers: Cross-border commuters from the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary in Austria

Abstract

This article investigates the impacts of negative labor market experiences on the life satisfaction of European East–West mobile workers by taking Czech, Slovak and Hungarian cross-border commuters working in Austria as an example. The recent literature has indicated a ‘dark side’ of East–West mobility, as many mobile Eastern Europeans face negative labor market experiences in the Western labor markets. If East–West commuters accept such experiences, employers and employees may quite easily subvert working standards, with detrimental effects on host countries that are intertwined in cross-border labor markets. Empirically, this study used a sequential mixed-methods design, based on quantitative and qualitative data from a research project on East–West commuters in Austria. The empirical findings showed that the negative labor market experiences are not important for commuters’ life satisfaction. From a multitude of those experiences under investigation, only ethnic discrimination experiences had a significantly negative impact. Instead, life satisfaction was mainly influenced by the overall health status and the perception that one’s own living conditions have improved in comparison with those of others from one’s country of origin. The in-depth qualitative findings corroborated the quantitative findings in terms of the low relevance of negative labor market experiences for the subjective assessments of commuting.