Systemic harm and regulatory repair? The migrant labor regime and 2020 occupational safety control act in the German meat industry

Abstract The meat industry is characterized by precarious employment, hazardous working conditions, and a strong reliance on migrant labor. Combined, these dynamics generate systemic health risks for migrant workers, as exemplified during the COVID-19 pandemic. In an effort to improve working conditions, the German government enacted the Occupational Safety Control Act (OSCA), which banned intermediated work in the industry’s core activities from 2021. Five years on, this article examines how different stakeholders assess the impact of the OSCA through the lens of a migrant labor regime. Empirically, the study draws on qualitative interviews, complemented by ethnographic engagement within a transdisciplinary research network. Conceptually, it links a political-economy perspective on migrant labor regimes – which foregrounds structural relations shaping migrant employment - to an analytical focus on how these structures materialize in, and are reproduced through, workers’ bodily and psychosocial experiences of harm. The findings suggest that workers’ transition into direct employment has led to improvements in employment conditions and certain aspects of occupational safety. However, long-term health harms, informal control practices, and limited worker voice persist. The article argues that these outcomes reflect the continued operation of a precarious migrant labor regime, in which injury and ill health are not merely unintended consequences but integral components of an infrastructure that disciplines and renders migrant labor exploitable. By linking structural regulation to embodied experience, the paper highlights both the limits of legal reform and the importance of addressing injury and inequity as constitutive features of precarious migrant labor regimes.