From underground economy to occupational downgrading: education levels and the labour market insertion of immigrants in Italy

Abstract

Firstly, the article argues that contemporary immigration into Italy, as well as into the other countries of southern Europe, is motivated, among other reasons, by the labour market demand from the receiving economic systems. In a framework of restrictive immigration policies, a well-established underground economy fosters unauthorized immigration but, when they are regularized by frequent amnesties, immigrant workers satisfy a large demand for registered labour, although at the lowest levels of the occupational ladder. However, the new immigrants are different from the «targeted» ones of the old European immigration, because many of them are highly educated people who have no other choice than to take jobs that require little in the way of qualifications. Using data from a survey carried out on 8,000 immigrants living in the largest Italian region, the second part of the article focuses on two points:whether the proportion of educated immigrants is lower among those who entered Italy more recently and how education levels affect the insertion of immigrants into the receiving labour market. The results show that the behaviour of the new immigrants is also different. The fact that «those that follow» are just as educated as the «explorers» always were confirms that unauthorized immigration is permanently self-selected. Finally, if we control other factors, education levels do not appear to affect the employment and unemployment probabilities of immigrants. We can suppose, therefore, that higher levels of education are not a resource, but a social constraint for many immigrants who do have not a merely instrumental commitment to work.