Trends and gaps in the academic literature on EU labour migration policies. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security No. 50/December 2012

This paper provides an overview of the ‘state of the art’ in the academic literature on EU labour migration policies. It forms part of the research agenda of Work Package 18 of the NEUJOBS project, which aims at reviewing legislation and practices regarding the labour market inclusion and protection of rights of different categories of foreign workers in European labour markets. Accordingly, particular attention is paid to the works of scholars who evaluate the status of rights of third-country national workers in relation to labour market access, employment security, social integration, etc., in European legislation on labour immigration. More specifically, the review has selected those scholarly works that focus specifically on analysing the manner in which policy-makers have addressed the granting of rights to non-EU migrant workers, and the manner in which policy agendas – through the relevant political and institutional dynamics – have found their translation in the legislation adopted. This paper consists of two core parts. In the first section, it reviews the works of scholars who have touched on these research questions with respect to the internal dimensions of EU labour migration policies. The second section does the same for the external dimensions of these policies. Both sections start off by analysing the main trends in the literature that reviews these questions for the internal and external dimensions of European migration policies as a whole, and then move on to how these ‘trends’ can (or cannot) be found translated in scholarly writings on labour migration policies more specifically. In the final section, the paper concludes by summarising the main trends and gaps in the literature reviewed, and indicates avenues for further research.

Composition and cure temperature: The influence on properties of final flexible PU cold cure foam parts

Foams are cellular structures, produced by gas bubbles formed during the polyurethane polymerization mixture. Flexible PU foams meet the following two criteria: have a limited resistance to an applied load, being both permeable to air and reversibly deformable. There are two main types of flexible foams, hot and cold cure foams differing in composition and processing temperatures. The hot cure foams are widely applied and represent the main composition of actual foams, while cold cure foams present several processing and property advantages, e.g, faster demoulding time, better humid aging properties and more versatility, as hardness variation with index changes are greater than with hot cure foams. The processing of cold cure foams also is attractive due to the low energy consumption (mould temperature from 30 degrees to 65 degrees C) comparatively to hot cure foams (mould temperature from 30 degrees to 250 degrees C). Another advantage is the high variety of soft materials for low temperature processing moulds. Cold cure foams are diphenylmethane diisocyanate (MDI) based while hot cure foams are toluene diisocyanate (TDI) based. This study is concerned with Viscoelastic flexible foams MDI based for medical applications. Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) was used to characterize the cure kinetics and Dynamical Mechanical Analisys to collect mechanical data. The data obtained from these two experimental procedures were analyzed and associated to establish processing/properties/operation conditions relationships. These maps for the selection of optimized processing/properties/operation conditions are important to achieve better final part properties at lower costs and lead times.