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.