In the EU , three countries have consistently occupied the three first positions in net immigration during the 2000s: Spain Italy and the UK (Eurostat data ). These three countries also have flexible labour markets, at least at the margins: the UK traditionally, Spain since the early 1990s and Italy after more recent reforms in 1997 – 2003. Interestingly, the EU countries with more rigid labour markets, such as Germany , France and Sweden, have had much smaller immigration flows. Of these three countries, in the UK and Spain the construction sector has been more important and the crisis that started in 2008 has been felt more, especially in terms of unemployment . We therefore select for our study the UK and Spain as best cases for the study of the relationship between labour market uncertainty and migration . While the UK and Spain present the same problem in a clear way, their institutional settings differ, allowing us to test for variation in terms of institutional responses and framing