North-south divide opens for migrant jobs in Europe

On a cold winter's morning beside the Atocha train station in central Madrid a dozen men wait silently for contractors in the market for cheap illegal labourers.

About 2,500 km north, at a sprawling slaughterhouse in the Danish countryside near Horsens, butchers in white overcoats leave their shift tired but garrulous, laughing in Polish.

Skilled migrant workers seeking employment in Europe would do well to head north. Foreigners in Spain are the first to lose their jobs as a decade-long construction boom comes to an end, but in the Nordic countries businesses can't get enough of them.

"It's a contrasting trend," said Jean-Pierre Garson, head of the international migration division at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). "The EU is a free market, with free settlement of people. Qualified people are now more mobile."

Nordic countries used to be known for inflows of refugees from war-torn countries, but now they're morphing into magnets for skilled migrant workers.

Denmark issued about 23,000 work permits to foreigners last year, up 41 per cent from 2006 and a six-fold increase from 2002. Poles received a third of the permits issued in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, only about 1,000 asylum-seekers were granted Danish residence last year - down from more than 6,000 in 2001.

Poles overtook Swedes as Norway's biggest minority last year. Finland has produced slick television ads in English to persuade migrants to move north to the land of Santa Claus.