GOVERNMENTS may be super-exploiting irregular migrants by making it easier to cross borders in order to access cheaper workers, researchers claimed yesterday.

A study focusing on Greece, but with wider implications across European governments, found that migrants have often been used as cheap labour and seen as essential to serve political interests. The study, entitled Punitive Inclusion by Dr Leonidas Cheliotis for the London School of Economics, concludes that the policies and practices of border controls which claim to be tight can in fact be designed badly.

He argued that irregular migrants — people without passports — have been systematically denied asylum, regularisation or even repatriation, leaving them at the mercy of unscrupulous employers in low-income sectors such as construction and agriculture.

Dr Cheliotis accused employers of using the “services” of the neonazi Golden Dawn party to intimidate refugee workers, who also faced violence from the police.

However, unions warned this was not the key cause of the refugee crisis engulfing the Middle East.

GMB national officer for equalities Kamaljeet Jandu said: “Any argument around cheap labour and exploitation in this case has to be secondary and is not the urgent issue facing Europe.

“We should also remember that the intervention of the West in Middle Eastern countries has resulted in the destruction of those civil societies leading to the emergence of Isis and movement of people seeking salvation.”

The report’s findings come on the second day of the EU-Turkey summit where the European Union struck a deal with Turkey over the refugees. Under the plan discussed in Brussels, all refugees arriving in Greece from Turkey would be returned.

For each Syrian sent back, a Syrian already in Turkey would be resettled in the EU. Turkey would also get extra funding and progress on EU integration.

But the UN’s refugee agency said any collective expulsion of foreigners was “not consistent with European law.”

And UN secretary-general Ban Ki Moon expressed concern over a Europe-wide lurch to the right on immigration.

Speaking after his meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin, Mr Ban said: “Extreme right-wing and nationalistic political parties are inflaming the situation where we need to be seeking solutions, harmonious solutions based on shared responsibilities.”

He added that he was “deeply worried by growing anti-migrant and anti-refugee rhetoric and by violent attacks against these communities.”