Irregular Immigration in Southern Europe by Maurizio Ambrosini

Author:Maurizio Ambrosini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Springer International Publishing, Cham

6 Italy: When Society Curbs State Policies

Foreign immigration in Italy has been shaped by two countervailing forces: an economic demand that remained very dynamic for approximately twenty years, from the end of the 1980s to 2008, and policies that for many years sought in principle to block the entrance of immigrants and stop the multi-ethnic transformation of society but ultimately were forced to accede to the demands of economic actors and allow practical transgressions of labour market regulations.

When analysing the phenomenon of migration in Italy, what is most striking is the speed with which the country changed its status from a place of emigration to a place of immigration. To date, according to statistical sources, Italy has approximately 5.5 million residents with foreign nationalities, of whom 2.4 million are regularly employed (Ministero del lavoro 2017).

The transition was largely spontaneous, unexpected and loosely regulated; it arose “from below”, in the labour market and in local societies, and was only acknowledged later—reluctantly—by public institutions and legal authorities (Ambrosini 2013b).

In the early 1990s, when it became clear in the public sphere that Italy was becoming a country of immigration, the phenomenon was considered essentially pathological: a new social problem had fallen upon an already troubled country that was plagued by high unemployment and deep internal inequalities on its North/South axis. Meanwhile, in a quiet and fragmented way, the labour market (mainly firms but families as well) worked in another direction, towards economic integration. Initially, the trend was informal, but it became increasingly formalized over time as it turned to focus on the richer and more developed regions, where the gap between labour supply and demand was deeper and more evident (Avola 2015). The political regulation of this situation came later, starting with the Martelli Law of 1990, which allowed immigrants to participate in the private labour market freely and on equal terms with Italian workers. Nonetheless, the gap between market needs and immigration policies has reopened time and again over the years.

It could be said that similar to other aspects of the Italian economy and society, a kind of micro-social do-it-yourself approach filled the void created by weak institutional arrangements and even actively thwarted the normative closures against the entry and settlement of new immigrants.

In this process, certain actors have taken a leading role in the social construction of encounters between (Italian) labour demand and (immigrant) workforce supply. In response to labour shortages, employers began to hire foreigners who they did not previously know; as a consequence, whether voluntarily or not (and probably driven by competition and profit seeking), employers started to overcome prejudices and to open doors, moving towards the integration of immigrants into reluctant local societies. As employers, households represent a peculiar but very important case (Ambrosini 2015). Specifically, despite political and cultural attitudes that are mostly hostile to or suspicious of immigration, Italian families have hired hundreds of thousands—1.6 million, according to a research funded by the Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs—of women and men for housework, childcare, and especially home care for seniors (Boccagni 2016; Cordini and Ranci 2017).

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