(IM)MIGRATION RESEARCH IN ITALY: A European Comparative Perspective

This article analyzes research on (im)migration in Italy since the early 1980s until the present as compared to research in other European receiving countries. Two periods are singled out. In the 1980s, the need to make sense of the dramatic Italian U-turn from an emigration to an immigration country prevails. Since the mid-1990s, some trends toward convergence emerge, following a number of theoretical and methodological challenges arising from North American research. Whereas for sociologist and anthropologist much of the debate is on social networks and transnationalism, in political science the gradual emerging of a policy approach to migration studies can be pointed out. However, despite the consolidating research infrastructure, there are still open questions and gaps in contemporary research on migration in Italy, for instance, second-generations, immigrants' associational and political participation, and last but not least, the impact of the European Union on Italian immigration and immigrant policy as well as policy making.     

Adult vocational training for migrants in North‐East Italy

This article contributes to the study of policies for the integration of immigrants into the labour markets of European immigration countries by focusing on the specific issue of vocational training for immigrant workers in Italy. Vocational training has a central role in the European employment strategy. Moreover, with regard to migrants, it is also relevant to the topical issue of the governance of international labour migration. The article analyses both the demand and the supply of vocational training in north‐east Italy, generally regarded as the rich and industrialised heart of the country. It draws on 30 interviews conducted with key informants and experts from local and regional governmental bodies, trade unions, employment offices, and private educational agencies in the main towns of the Veneto region. Various types of vocational training for immigrant workers are considered, from traditional full‐time courses financed by the European Social Fund to new projects for the selection and pre‐training of immigrants in their countries of origin. The extent to which these policy tools are able to meet the actual needs of immigrant workers and of the local business sector is investigated, as well as their problematic interaction with the national regulatory framework for immigration control.     

Migration and the Currency Denomination of Trade

Using a large, transaction‐level dataset of Italian exports and imports with non‐European Union countries, we assess the role of migrants’ networks in shaping the currency denomination of trade. Our results, new to the literature, show sizable, significant effects of migration on the currency denomination of trade. Generally, more migrants lead to more invoicing in the exporter's and importer's currency relative to a vehicle currency, higher educated migrants increase invoicing in the exporter's and importer's currency relative to a vehicle currency, and Italian migrants living in foreign countries have a greater impact relative to foreign migrants living in Italy.     

Impact of the reversal of the migration situation on the social structures of certain countries: the case of Italy

During the past 20 years, Italy has changed from being a country with well-established traditions of emigration to a country of destination. Italy had achieved 1 of the highest economic growth rates in the world. Conditions in Italy are favorable for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from developing countries. Most immigrants settle in large cities and in the South; most are in Italy illegally, performing jobs which Italians do not want. The Act n.943 of January 27, 1987, 1 of the most advanced and most liberal unilateral legal texts has 2 sections: 1) the 1st section establishes regulations governing the admission and residence of foreigners and conditions under which they may enter employment and 2) the 2nd section concerns the regularization of all situations involving the illegal presence of the hundreds of thousands of workers who arrived in Italy before 1987. During the 1st year of implementation, the Act proved to be ideologically enviable but unsuitable in practice. Specifically, Italian consulates in developing countries have received very few applications for permanent residence permits, while clandestine immigration is continuing. Also, only about 14% of clandestine immigrants who arrived before 1987 have regularized their situations. Insufficient information and excessive red tape in the regularization procedures contributed to these results. However, the fundamental cause of failure is economic: migrants know that regularization would keep them out of the labor market and be followed by loss of job and unemployment. Italians are uninterested in the role of immigrants as new members of society; the migrants, in turn, do everything possible not to draw attention to their presence and their diversity. Still, most Italians view immigrants with suspicion. To prepare for the future, account must be taken of possible fluctuations in the economic situation of expanding receiving countries and of the impact which these fluctuations may have on the degree of acceptance of immigrants. To solve these problems Italy must, 1) have a rational, realistic, and comprehensive approach to medium-term planning;2) use official development assistance to carry out labor-intensive projects in the partner country, to reduce the pressure to migrate; 3) base the planning of migration policy on the establishment of admission criteria for immigrants; 4) treat immigrants fairly and promote integration that respects their cultural identity; and 5) achieve international and multilateral coordination and consultation for migration policies.     

Migration Dynamics,Entrepreneurship, and African Development: Lessons from Malawi

Using data from Malawi, this study situates the discourse on migration, entrepreneurship, and development within the context of Africa's social realities. It examines self‐employment differences among three groups of migrants and corresponding group differences in agricultural and non‐agricultural self‐employment. International migrants are found to be more engaged in self‐employment than internal migrants. However, our results suggest that previous findings on the development‐related contributions of returning migrants from the West need to be appropriately contextualized. When returnees from the West invest in self‐employment, they typically shy away from Africa's largest economic sector – agriculture. In contrast, levels of self‐employment, especially in agricultural self‐employment, are highest among returning migrants and immigrants from other African countries, especially from those nearby. We also underscore the gendered dimensions of migrants’ contribution to African development by demonstrating that female migrants are more likely to be self‐employed in agriculture than male migrants. Furthermore, as human‐capital increases, migrants are more likely to concentrate their self‐employment activities in non‐agricultural activities and not in the agricultural sector. The study concludes using these findings to discuss key implications for policy and future research.     

Social effects of migration in receiving countries

This paper examines the impact of post-1945 migration into Western, Middle, and Northern Europe from Southern Europe, Turkey, and Northern Africa, and migration to the traditional immigration countries by Asian and Latin American immigrants, on the social structures of receiving countries. Between 1955 and 1974, 1) traditional migration to the US and Australia became less important for European countries while traditional receiving countries accepted many immigrants from developing countries; and 2) rapid economic revival in Western and Northern Europe caused a considerable labor shortage which was filled by migrant workers especially from Southern Europe, Turkey, and Northern Africa, who stayed only until they reached their economic goals. Since 1974, job vacancies have declined and unemployment has soared. This employment crisis caused some migrants 1) to return to their countries of origin, 2) to bring the rest of their families to the receiving country, or 3) to lengthen their stay considerably. The number of refugees has also significantly increased since the mid-970s, as has the number of illegal migrants. After the mid-1970s, Europe began to experience integration problems. The different aspects of the impact of migration on social structures include 1) improvement of the housing situation for foreigners, 2) teaching migrants the language of the receiving country, 3) solving the unemployment problem of unskilled migrants, 4) improvement of educational and vocational qualifications of 2nd generation migrants, 5) development of programs to help unemployed wives of migrants to learn the language and meet indigenous women, 6) encouraging migrants to maintain their cultural identity and assisting them with reintegration if they return to their original country, 7) coping with the problems of refugees, and 8) solving the problems of illegal migration. Almost all receiving countries now severely restrict further immigration. [Those policies should result in improved development of aid policies towards sending countries. Immigration from other countries to those of the European Economic community should be limited to that for humanitarian reasons.     

Reducing Irregular Migration from China

With the development of China's economy since 1979, a new type of Chinese migration has emerged, which is more diversified and quite distinct from previous migration patterns. Trafficking in human beings and other forms of irregular migration are one of the most pressing and complex human rights issues today, reaching across borders and affecting most of the countries in the world, with new and serious security implications. As part of the international irregular migration flows toward and into the European Union (EU), the Chinese, particularly from Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, have played a major role since the 1980s. To some extent, it could be said that China provides the largest number of East Asian irregular immigrants to Europe. Based on fieldwork conducted in southern China over the past seven years, this paper proposes to examine current Chinese irregular migration trends. It will further present the Government's response regarding the migratory modus operandi and policy implications with the aim of offering policy makers an empirical insight into the most active region of emigration in China. Because of the difficulty and sensitivity involved in collecting data on the topic, materials in this paper are mainly based on a content analysis of local Chinese newspapers and my interviews with various people involved in irregular migration activities, such as “snakeheads”, illegal migrants and their family members, and police, local, and government officials at different levels.     

Nigerians in China: A Second State of Immobility

China’s rapid economic development has been accompanied by new forms of immigration. Investors and professionals from developed countries are increasingly joined by a diverse group of immigrants from around the world. While there is a large body of academic literature on Chinese emigration, China’s new role as a country of immigration has received less scholarly attention. This paper addresses the dynamics of South–South migration to China through a study of Nigerians in Guangzhou, a major international trading hub. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews and participant observation among African traders and migrants in Guangzhou. The paper contends that Nigerian immigration to China epitomizes global migration trends towards a diversification of migration flows, commercialization of the migration process and increased policing of foreigners within national borders. China was rarely the preferred destination of this study’s Nigerian informants but, rather, a palatable alternative, as their aspirations to enter Europe and North America were curtailed by restrictive immigration regimes. They escaped a situation of involuntary immobility in Nigeria through short‐term visas obtained with the help of migration brokers. However, opportunities for visa renewals are scant under the current Chinese immigration policy. Undocumented migrants find their mobility severely inhibited: They must carefully assess how, when and with whom they move about in order to avoid police interception. This is a business impediment, as well as a source of personal distress for migrants who engage in trade and the provision of trade‐related services. The situation can be described as a “second state of immobility”: the migrants have succeeded in the difficult project of emigration, but find themselves spatially entrapped in new ways in their destination country.     

The Past is Ever Present: Transnationalism Old and New – Italian and Mexican Immigrants in the US

The paper focuses on what is old and what is new in transnationalism by analyzing extraterritorial attempts of the Italian and Mexican governments. During the large southern/ eastern European immigration to the US from 1890 to the 1920s, Italian immigrants reached 24 percent of the immigrant wave. Mexican documented and undocumented immigrants from the 1980s until 2010s made up 30 percent of the immigrant wave almost a century later. Transnational immigrants live in a country in which they do not claim citizenship rights and claim citizenship rights in a country they do not live in. Therefore migration and immigrant policies challenge both sending and receiving states. Foreign governments are limited in the policies and practices that they can enforce. A comparison of state policies from Italy and Mexico challenges the fact that transnationalism is significantly different and new.     

Measures to facilitate the reintegration of returning migrants into their countries of origin

Migration movements are presently a worldwide phenomenon; all groups of migrant workers, regardless of their origin or generation, have common problems. Return migrants' problems and their solution concern the emigration countries as well as the immigration countries. 3 proposals for an integrated approach to solving return migrants' problems follow. 1) Provide general assistance to the returning migrants. a) Statistical information about migrants and causes of their return should be gathered. b) Job placement assistance should be available to the returnees. c) Migrants should be assisted with travel and removal expenses. d) Their children's education should be facilitated by education in their mother tongue, travel to the home country during vacations, readaptation courses, and acceptance of diplomas and certificates obtained abroad. e) All emigration countries should accept a simplified and extended form of second retirement program to protect emigrants' social security rights. 2) Provide vocational training and readaptation. a) Home countries should seek ways to profit from the skill and knowledge returning migrant workers offer. b) Young skilled returnees should be employed as teachers and trainers. c) Vocational training centers should be developed and maintained. d) Course certificates obtained abroad should be accepted in the home country. 3) Create new job opportunities for returnees. a) Small businesses and grants to start private businesses should be encouraged. b) Technical and financial assistance should be provided to workers' companies. c) Migrant workers' savings should be directed to areas that are productive and that create employment possibilities. d) Possible return migration may be facilitated by issuing shares in investment projects with preferences, guaranteeing exchange rates, allowing accounts in foreign currencies, issuing government bonds with preferences, developing special aid funds for housing schemes, guaranteeing migrant workers' enterprises, and by offering returning migrants the option to buy shares in companies against foreign currency.     

Best Practice Options: Albania

The Cooperative Efforts to Manage Emigration (CEME) site visit to Italy and Albania – organized in cooperation with the Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSPI), an Italian independent research institute – took place in June 2002. Albania is a country of 3.1 million people with a GDP of $4.1 billion that switched in the early 1990s, after 45 years of communism, from economic autarky to a peculiar form of market economy, and experienced some of the world’s highest emigration rates in the 1990s. Some 600,000 to 700,000 Albanians, or almost one–fourth of Albanians, and half of Albanian professionals, emigrated. As a result, the labour force is only 38 per cent of the population, versus 50 per cent in most industrial countries (UNDP, 1996, 2000). The major destinations of Albanian migrants in the 1990s were Greece, which had 400,000 to 600,000 Albanians in 2002, and Italy, which had 144,000 legal residents and probably some tens of thousands illegals at the end of 2001. 1 The Albanian Government estimates that about half of the Albanians in Greece are legal residents. There are also about 100,000 Albanians in Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and other Western European countries.
Many Albanians have become legal residents of Greece and Italy as a result of regularization–legalization programmes. Albania is also a transit point for third country nationals attempting to reach the rest of Europe via Albania. Of particular interest to the CEME members were efforts by the Italian and Albanian governments to cooperate in managing the flows of Albanian and transit migrants. When the CEME visit was made, Albania was experiencing rapid, yet unbalanced economic growth as a result of $615 million in remittances from Albanians abroad (estimates: Bank of Albania annual report, 2001), and aid from the European Union (EU) and other sources. The spending of remittances and aid has fuelled a building boom, but there was no clear sense of how Albania would use the window of opportunity opened by remittances and aid to develop a viable economy. The optimistic scenario is that remittances and investments from Albanians abroad will produce an economic take off based on value–added food production and tourism in the “Switzerland of the Balkans”. The pessimistic scenario is that corruption and divided government will prevent the development of a successful economic strategy, and that low wages, high unemployment, and inadequate services such as health care and education will prompt the continued emigration of young and educated Albanians. Potential best practices include: joint Italian–Albanian marine patrols to discourage smuggling and trafficking in small “fast boats”; Italy granting Albania at least 6,000 work visas a year to publicize that there is a legal way to work in Italy, helping to discourage illegal migration; and bilateral and international assistance to enable Albania to develop laws and institutions to deal with foreigners transiting Albania, and foreigners requesting asylum in Albania. Albania does not, on the other hand, appear to be a best practice in managing the use of remittances to aid economic development. Although remittances play an important role in basic subsistence and construction of housing, there have been fewer efforts to encourage investment of these funds in infrastructure or productive activities. The banking system needs substantial reform to become a venue for transfer of remittances and source of credit for enterprise development. Albania would benefit from a more systematic examination of the lessons learned in other countries about the investment of remittances for economic development.     

Channels of Entry and Preferred Destinations: The Circumvention of Denmark by Chinese Immigrants

As globalization spread during the 1990s, and especially since the turn of the millennium, European states have increasingly claimed their right to assert their sovereignty by regulating migration at the level of the individual (OECD, 2001: 76–81). Political parties have succeeded in gaining support on policy statements pertaining exclusively to migration. For example, recent legislation in Denmark restricts the categories of persons eligible as refugees to “Convention refugees” satisfying only the narrowest international criteria set out in the UN Refugee Convention. The civil rights of asylum seekers are restricted by prohibiting marriage while their applications are under review. To limit family reunification among immigrants, the present Danish Government has even prohibited immigrants with permanent residence status and Danish citizens from bringing non‐Danish spouses under age 24 into the country. These attempts at border enforcement and immigration control have been described by some critics as the endeavours of European Union (EU) members to build a “Fortress Europe” against immigrants from developing countries. Policy decisions and the implementation of various measures from finger printing to radar surveillance to control immigrants have corroborated such perceptions, but this paper will show that gaining entry to a highly controlled country such as Denmark from a poorer country such as the People's Republic of China (PRC) is fairly straightforward. Politicians may wish to convey the impression of being in control of international mobility by launching diverse anti‐immigration acts, but since the immigration embargo of the early 1970s all EU countries have received millions of immigrants, and increasingly permit or accept immigrants of various kinds to reside and work within their borders (Boeri et al., 2002). Immigration from developing countries is not evenly distributed throughout the EU, but rather targets specific destinations. This article will attempt to explain the direction of Chinese immigration flows to Europe in response to labour‐market demand, rather than as a consequence of “loopholes” in a country's legal or welfare provisions. By analysing historical and demographic data on the PRC Chinese in Denmark, I attempt to demonstrate that, despite being a European country with one of the lowest asylum rejection rates for PRC Chinese, the scope of Chinese asylum seekers and regular and irregular migrants arriving by way of family reunification remained limited in the 1990s compared to southern, central, and eastern European countries. My analysis of Danish data in relation to Chinese migration suggest that destinations related to the globalization of Chinese migration is more determined by labour and capital markets than the presumed attraction of social welfare benefits provided by a European welfare state such as Denmark.     

Thailand's responses to transnational migration during economic growth and economic downturn

This paper gives an historical overview of immigration to Thailand since the 1970s and emigration since the 1960s. It describes migration policies since the 1930s. Final discussion focuses on the impact of economic contraction on migration. Immigration to Thailand dates back to the 1760s when a huge wave of Chinese emigrated to Thailand. The flow continued until about 1850 and resumed during 1905-17. The next big waves of immigrants were after 1975, when refugees fled Indochina, and in the 1990s, when migrants flocked from neighboring countries drawn to the booming economy. Thai professionals left in the 1960s for the USA. During the 1980s, many left for work in the Middle East. During the 1990s, Thai migrants moved within the East and Southeastern Asian countries and the USA or Europe, and they included many women and illegal migrants. Emigrants leave as arranged by the government, by employers, by recruitment agencies, and as trainees. The first official act was in 1950 and revised in 1979. Many work permits were approved in the 1990s, especially for unskilled labor. There are supports for Thai migrants abroad, but little is offered to foreigners at home. By 1997, the country's recession led to nonrenewal of many work permits. The 1998 economic crisis led to a new labor policy that deported illegal and unskilled migrant workers in order to create jobs for Thais. Policy encouraged Thais to seek work overseas.     

Chinese Immigrants in the U.S. Labor Market: Effects of Post‐Tiananmen Immigration Policy1

The Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 and ensuing government crackdown affected Chinese nationals not only at home but also around the world. The U.S. government responded to the events in China by enacting multiple measures to protect Chinese nationals present in the United States. It first suspended all forced departures among Chinese nationals present in the country as of June 1989 and later gave them authorization to work legally. The Chinese Student Protection Act, passed in October 1992, made those Chinese nationals eligible for lawful permanent resident status. These actions applied to about 80,000 Chinese nationals residing in the United States on student or other temporary visas or illegally. Receiving permission to work legally and then a green card is likely to have affected recipients’ labor market outcomes. This study uses 1990 and 2000 census data to examine employment and earnings among Chinese immigrants who were likely beneficiaries of the U.S. government’s actions. Relative to immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, and South Korea – countries not covered by the post‐Tiananmen immigration policy measures – highly educated immigrants from mainland China experienced significant employment and earnings gains during the 1990s. Chinese immigrants who arrived in the U.S in time to benefit from the measures also had higher relative earnings in 2000 than Chinese immigrants who arrived too late to benefit. The results suggest that getting legal work status and then a green card has a significant positive effect on skilled migrants’ labor market outcomes.     

U.S. Immigration Policy at a Crossroads: Should the U.S. Continue Its Family‐Friendly Policy?

An ongoing debate is whether the U.S. should continue its family‐based admission system, which favors visas for family members of U.S. citizens and residents, or adopt a more skills‐based system, replacing family visas with employment‐based visas. In many ways, this is a false dichotomy: family‐friendly policies attract highly‐skilled immigrants regardless of their own visa path, and there are not strong reasons why a loosening of restrictions on employment migrants need be accompanied by new restrictions on family‐based immigration. Moreover, it is misleading to think that only employment‐based immigrants contribute to the U.S. economy. Recent immigrants, who have mostly entered via kinship ties, are economically productive, a fact hidden by a flawed methodology that underlies most economic analyses of immigrant economic assimilation.     

Regrounding the ‘Ungrounded Empires’:localization as the geographical catalyst for transnationalism

The emerging literature on transnationalism has reshaped the study of immigration in the USA from ‘melting pot’ and later ‘salad bowl’, to ‘switching board’, which emphasizes the ability of migrants to forge and maintain ties to their home countries. Often under the heading of ‘transnationalism from below’, these studies highlight an alternative form of globalization, in which migrants act as active agents to initiate and structure global interactions. The role of geography, and in particular, localization in transnational spaces, is central to the transnationalism debate, but is yet to be well articulated. While it has been commonly claimed that transnationalism represents deterritorialized practices and organizations, we argue that it is in fact rooted in the territorial division of labour and local community networks in immigrant sending and receiving countries. We examine closely two business sectors engaged in by the Chinese immigrants in Los Angeles: high‐tech firms and accounting firms. Each illustrates, respectively, the close ties of Chinese transnational activities with the economic base of the Los Angeles region, and the contribution of local‐based, low‐wage, small ethnic businesses to the transnational practices. We conclude that deeper localization is the geographical catalyst for transnational networks and practices.     

Double emigration: geographical and cultural? The participation of Italian women in the German labour market

Already at the beginning of the fifties on the initiative of Italy, negotiations began between the Italian and German governments for the recruitment of migrant-workers, which ended in 1955 with a bilateral agreement between the two countries. Through this recruitment policy and because of the labour-market (Industry and Building) the Italian migration was composed prevalently of men. Female immigration happened in the setting of family reunification and less as an independent movement project. After years of stagnation of italian emigration in the eighties it may also be noted that, since the early nineties, there has been a revival of immigration to Germany. This and modernisation processes in Italy changed the gender composition of the Italian immigration flow to Germany: the distance between male and female immigration is decreasing. A peculiarity of the Italians in Germany is the low occupational participation of women in comparison with other women from EU countries. However, we could observe regional differences, which depend on the migration typologies and the dominating economic structure in the areas. The paper will analyse this different aspects (immigration-processes, migrant-typologies and labour-market participation) by female Italian migrants.     

International migration data: their problems and usefulness in Venezuela

During the 1940s and 1950s Venezuela was an important destination for migrants from Southern Europe, a flow that disappeared almost entirely during the 1960s, to be replaced by border movements and the largely illegal migration of Colombians. The oil boom of the 1970s saw an increase of the latter, which may have subsided during the 1980s due to the more difficult economic conditions that have also led to significant emigration levels of Venezuelans and former immigrants. Methods of data collection systems that provide information on migrants include the National Population and Housing Census, the National Household Survey, migration surveys, arrival and departure statistics, registration systems operated by the Direccion General Sectorial de identificacion y Control de Extranjeros, the 1980 regularization drive, statistics gathered by the Ministry of Labor, and vital and civil registration statistics. The lack of effective coordination among the different government agencies gathering information and the administrative nature of the data collected give rise to problems of comparability. Mechanisms to publish and disseminate the data available are not well developed, so that researchers often have no access to potentially useful sources of information. Problems of timeliness in the publication of the most widely used information are also present, as is the large gap existing in data pertaining to emigration, be it of Venezuelan nationals or of immigrants leaving the country.     

Return Migration in Africa and the Relationship between Educational Attainment and Labor Market Success: Evidence from Uganda

The return migration of skilled professionals has been suggested as a policy instrument suitable for reversing the large‐scale emigration of skilled professionals from African countries. However, there are no empirical studies showing how migrant professionals from Africa are reintegrated into the labor market after they return. This study examines the relationship between educational attainment and the likelihood of employment among native‐born African migrants returning home from abroad. The study focuses on the evidence from Uganda since this country has one of the longest histories of skilled migration in Africa. The results show that returning migrants with university degrees and vocational credentials are more likely to be employed than their nonmigrant and immigrant counterparts. However, this employment advantage was not observed among returning migrants with secondary schooling or below. Furthermore, the results show that returning migrants are generally more likely to be employed as district employment rates increase.     

Patterns of Immigrant Occupational Attainment in a Longitudinal Survey

This paper uses data from the Longitudinal Survey of Immigrants to Australia to examine the empirical relevance of a model of immigrant occupational mobility. Consistent with the model, there is a U‐shaped pattern of occupational change from the pre‐immigration occupation through to the occupation held after three‐and‐a‐half years in Australia. The U is shallower for immigrants from countries similar to Australia than it is for immigrants from countries that differ more in language, occupational requirements, and labour market structure. The U‐shaped pattern is deeper for immigrants who are refugees than for family migrants and is the least deep for economic migrants.