Gender, households and the production of irregularity in Europe

Davide Colombi, Lena Näre and Paula Merikoski

Migrants’ irregular status in Europe is not a fixed legal category but a product of the interactions between migration, labour, welfare and family policy regimes. Drawing on research from the Horizon Europe I-CLAIM project, this Policy Brief shows that access to residence security and family life is increasingly conditioned by continuous employment, income thresholds, housing requirements and employer sponsorship. These criteria are embedded in gender-segmented labour markets and unequal care responsibilities. Women are disproportionately represented in undervalued and underprotected care and domestic work, while men are overrepresented in physically demanding and precarious sectors such as agriculture and platform-based delivery work, exposing both to different forms of vulnerability, exploitation and irregularisation.

These dynamics extend beyond individuals to shape household strategies and intergenerational outcomes. Residence permit renewal and family reunification regimes systematically privilege stable breadwinner models and disadvantage precariously employed households, delaying reunification, prolonging family separation and sustaining legal uncertainty.
Precarious work and legal insecurity undermine caregiving, family formation and children’s wellbeing, while gender-based violence and harassment are structurally embedded in irregularised labour marked by dependency and isolation. Legal frameworks, administrative practices and public narratives worsen gendered and racialised hierarchies of deservingness, selectively recognising vulnerability and obscuring structural harms. Addressing the production of irregularity requires decoupling residence and family rights from income and employer dependency, recognising care and family life as integral to migration governance, and extending effective labour protections to all workers, regardless of their status.