The role of non-state actors

Non-state actors (“migration intermedi­aries”) play a key role in recruitment, acting as first points of contact for prospective migrants: These actors include individuals, migrant networks, commercial recruitment agencies, trade unions, education providers, and language schools. Their services often cover the entire migration process. Before departure, they provide information on job opportunities, help with documentation, and arrange employment. Some also organ­ise accommodation and transport during the journey, and provide support after arri­val in the destination country, for example with finding housing, dealing with author­ities, or taking initial steps towards inte­gra­tion. Employers also use these services to meet their workforce needs. Therefore, non-state recruitment actors can facilitate migra­tion or, in some cases, make it possible in the first place. This is particularly true where advisory and training services in countries of origin are inadequate and reliable infor­mation on the immigration system and on working and living conditions in the desti­nation country is limited.

A wide range of unfair practices

Most of these actors operate reliably. Never­theless, private recruitment also carries substantial risks of abusive practices. Due to information asymmetries in countries of origin, non-state actors often function as gatekeepers and exert considerable control over access to employment opportunities abroad. In doing so, they can create one-sided dependencies and foster unrealistic expectations. These risks increase when recruitment practices are exploitative, for example when migrants receive misleading information about working and living con­ditions in the destination country or are drawn into fraudulent contractual arrange­ments. High recruitment fees are particu­larly problematic: Recent reporting on the Ger­man meat-processing industry cites fees of up to 15,000 euros. Such costs can push migrants into debt and thus increase the economic pressure to accept poor working conditions. In serious cases, recruitment practices may amount to human trafficking, for instance when mig­rants are black­mailed or deprived of their freedom of action by having their identity documents withheld. At the same time, recruitment is increasingly shifting to the digital sphere: Prospective workers are lured via social media or messaging services with false job offers that closely resemble legitimate ones. Artificial intelligence is making such fraud easier.

What officially counts as unfair recruitment remains politically contested. The definition used by the International Labour Organization (ILO) provides guidance: According to it, recruitment is fair when it complies with international labour stand­ards and human rights, and is free from discrimination and exploitative conditions. Central to this is the Employer Pays Prin­ciple, under which recruitment fees and associated costs, such as for visas, documents, or travel, should not be passed on to migrant workers. In practice, however, disagreement persists over which costs are covered within the principle’s scope. Furthermore, the principle is rarely imple­mented, not least because recruiting abroad is particularly complex and expensive for small and medium-sized enterprises.

A lucrative business model

Abusive recruitment has long since become a profitable business model. It occurs parti­cularly where profit-driven, informal actors (such as unregistered recruitment agencies or criminal networks) are active. According to ILO estimates, transnational recruitment actors generate around 32 billion euros worldwide each year through such prac­tices, including 27 billion from withheld wages and 5 billion from recruitment fees. The demand for private recruitment services stems largely from employers in destination countries. Particularly in the low-wage sector, companies outsource recruitment to external intermediaries, thereby transferring costs, risks, and respon­sibility. This often gives rise to complex recruitment chains involving subcontractors across national borders who also profit from the process. The result is fragmented accountability and increasingly opaque employment relationships.

Migration corridors and their risks

Recruitment processes and the risks associated with them vary significantly by country of origin and migration corridor, for example in terms of legal frameworks, the actors involved, fee structures, and whether migration takes place through regular or irregular channels.

Exploitation is also increasingly occurring within regular labour and educational migration. In recent months, the situation of Indian students in major German cities has moved to the forefront of public debate. The media have reported on cases in which private universities, education agencies, and recruitment agencies lure young Indians to Germany with misleading information about education and career opportunities. High tuition and recruitment fees create considerable financial pressure after arrival. As a result, many of these students end up in precarious or exploitative work, for instance in the platform economy as bicycle couriers for delivery services such as Wolt, UberEats, or Lieferando.

Similar patterns can be observed in the recruitment of Vietnamese migrants who are promised regular employment. They arrive in Germany with visas for vocational training or work, or via multi-stage migra­tion corridors – including through Poland, where work visas are relatively easy to obtain. Once there, they sometimes end up in informal or exploitative working con­ditions, in nail salons, the hospitality sector, or sex work. Here, too, the reasons include excessive recruitment fees and indebtedness, as well as a lack of social protection and dependencies relating to residence status.

The migration corridor from Bangladesh via Libya to Italy is another example of complex recruitment processes. It often begins with recruitment by official recruit­ment agencies in Bangladesh and regular entry into Benghazi in eastern Libya on a work or visitor visa. Once migrants are in Libya, smuggling networks take over the irregular onward journey to Italy.

These examples illustrate how regular and irregular recruitment practices can intersect within the same recruitment chains, particularly when formal pathways to Europe are expensive, time-consuming, or restricted. Recruitment and smuggling networks adapt their business models quickly when border regimes change. As a result, exploitation risks do not usually disappear, but are instead displaced along the migration route or to other stages of the recruitment and migration process. Even regular migration pathways do not automatically protect migrants from ex­ploitative working conditions. This makes recruitment practices all the more central to an effective protection framework against exploitation.

Germany relies heavily on non-state actors

Migration intermediaries play a central role in recruitment to Germany. According to initial surveys in the German care sector, around three-quarters of the foreign workers employed there came to Germany via private recruitment agencies. One reason for this is that the German labour migration model – unlike state-managed quota systems such as those in Italy and Spain – is based primarily on individual job searches and on direct or indirect matching between companies and workers, as well as trainees. Anyone wishing to migrate to Germany must therefore usually organise the prepa­rations largely on their own, from gathering information and looking for a job to applying for a visa and securing recognition of qualifications. Because visa, recognition, and immigration procedures are so com­plex, the demand for support is increasing. Many migrants therefore turn to private recruitment intermediaries. Government recruitment projects do exist in selected partner countries, including programmes administered by the Federal Employment Agency (BA) and the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). In numerical terms, however, they play only a minor role compared with privately organised education and labour migration.

Although recruitment in practice is largely shaped by non-state actors, the policy debate remains heavily focused on state-led skilled labour recruitment. Actors such as diaspora networks and trade unions provide information, advice, and support, thereby fulfilling important protective func­tions in migration and integration processes. To date, however, they have rarely been systematically involved, for example in the bilateral migration agreement with Kenya, in which social partners were not taken into account.

Even reputable recruitment agencies and companies committed to fair standards are still not sufficiently involved in the policy design of recruitment from third countries. Companies, in particular, therefore bear responsibility for ensuring fair conditions both in recruitment and in the workplace. Through their demand for labour, they influence which intermediaries are hired, which standards apply along the recruitment chain, and what costs are imposed on migrants.

Regulation of private recruitment agencies

Private recruitment agencies are subject to very few regulatory requirements, even though they play a key role in shaping the labour migration process to Germany. Germany has not yet ratified the ILO Con­vention No. 181 of 1997, which sets stand­ards for the regulation of private recruitment agencies, including the Employer Pays Principle. In Germany, there is neither a comprehensive licensing or registration requirement for recruitment agencies, nor a specialised supervisory authority for inter­national labour recruitment. In the absence of registers, it is difficult to determine how many recruitment agencies are based in Germany; this is even more true for agen­cies abroad that operate in Germany.

Since 2002, a simple business registration with minimal state requirements has been sufficient to recruit workers from abroad. Statutory provisions (Sections 296–299 of Book III of the Social Code) stipulate an upper limit of 2,000 euros for recruitment fees charged by private recruitment agencies, as well as a written placement contract designed to ensure transparency regarding the agency’s remuneration and services. Since January 2026, employers have also been subject to disclosure and information obligations when recruiting third-country nationals from abroad (Sec­tion 45c of the Residence Act). Yet, without effective supervision and enforcement, vio­lations often go unpunished. This applies in particular to recruitment agencies based outside Germany, where German law has no reach.

In addition, initiatives such as the state-supported Seal of Quality “Fair Recruitment Healthcare Germany” seek to encourage recruitment agencies and companies to commit voluntarily to fair recruitment abroad. However, voluntary instruments of this kind are often limited to agencies based in Germany and the European Economic Area, cover only specific sectors, and cannot replace binding state regulation. The largely unregulated, non-transparent market for private recruitment agencies not only hin­ders fair recruitment but also encourages competitive distortions at the expense of reputable providers.

At the same time, the EU has only limited regulatory competences in the area of labour migration, and there is no EU-wide framework to prevent unfair recruitment of third-country nationals. National rules therefore vary widely, ranging from statu­tory regulation and licensing, registration systems to voluntary commitments by private actors. Some countries, such as Romania and Bulgaria, already have more extensive regulatory mechanisms in place than Germany. Romania, for example, requires agencies to register with the state Labour Inspectorate, which moni­tors com­pliance with occupational health and safety regulations.

However, even where legal rules and binding standards exist, their effectiveness is often limited by weak capacity, insufficient cross-border cooperation, and poor information exchange between authorities. This applies not only to destination coun­tries, but also to countries of origin such as Morocco, which has adopted comprehensive regulations for recruitment agencies. The challenge, then, is not only the lack of regulation and the limited institutional embedding of international standards on fair recruitment, but also the failure to enforce existing rules and impose sanctions.

Cross-border cooperation

The transnational character of labour recruitment makes effective monitoring of placement practices particularly difficult. Regulation and enforcement remain largely national, while private recruitment agen­cies exploit accountability gaps between legal systems and the limited access to infor­mation available to prospective migrants. Fair recruitment therefore depends on close cross-border cooperation, with a particular focus on setting common standards for placement, information-sharing on abusive practices, and developing joint monitoring and complaints mechanisms.

However, German authorities have few means of monitoring placement practices abroad or exchanging information across borders. Consequently, there are significant shortcomings in cooperation within the EU. Although the European Labour Authority (ELA) was established to improve cooperation between national authorities, its scope for effective interventions is limited. Furthermore, its mandate does not formally cover third-country nationals recruited and employed directly from third countries by employers in EU member states. Complex subcontracting chains further complicate monitoring and coordination. In addition, Germany’s cooperation with third countries on fair recruitment is still at an early stage. So far, it has largely consisted of dialogue formats, pilot projects, and state-organised placement schemes, such as the Federal Employment Agency’s (BA) cooperation with labour administrations in selected countries under the Triple-Win programme, which is based on the International Organi­zation for Migration’s standards on fair recruitment. Bilateral migration agreements, such as those with Kenya and Uzbekistan, emphasise fair recruitment and the fight against labour exploitation, forced labour, and human trafficking. But for now, this remains largely on paper. Concrete meas­ures to regulate and monitor private recruit­ment agencies or to protect migrant workers are still lacking.

At the same time, some development cooperation projects offer useful models for promoting fair recruitment structures abroad. Examples include “Towards a Holistic Approach to Labour Migration Governance and Labour Mobility in North Africa” (THAMM plus) and “Partnerships for Development-oriented Training and Labour Migration” (PAM) in Ecuador, Jordan, and Vietnam. Another example is the “Shaping Development-oriented Migration” (MEG) programme. Among other things, it helps local authorities in setting up and expanding advisory services for people interested in migration and in developing standards for ethical recruitment. The Centres for Migration and Development, which are funded by the Federal Ministry for Econom­ic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), also provide advice in several partner coun­tries on regular migration for the purpose of work or vocational training in Germany and Europe, and refer prospective migrants to trustworthy local training and support services. Nevertheless, the potential for migration-related development cooperation to expand governance and protection capa­cities in countries of origin and transit is still far from being fully realised.