Does speaking or writing Italian make differences?

Although researchers acknowledge the key role of language in immigrant integration, empirical analyses on how proficiency in Italian differently shape the social outcomes of immigrants living in Italy are limited. Using the Italian Survey on Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens, we model individual demographic and linguistic patterns, setting apart communication ability from other linguistic skills. Clustering immigrants by mother tongue linguistic group, we leverage the age at arrival and knowledge of Italian during childhood to address endogeneity. Findings reveal how deficiencies in Italian affect integration outcomes of immigrants: the magnitude of effects due to poor proficiency in communication (understanding and speaking) is larger when compared to more formal linguistic skills (reading and writing). Women suffer from higher linguistic barriers in the employment outcomes than men do. Results give empirical argumentations to support immigrant integration through the development of language-training programmes in destination languages tailored on immigrants' demographic and linguistic profiles.     

Do Foreigners Cushion Native Jobs? The Case of European Regions in the 1990s

Abstract. This paper investigates whether foreigners cushion native labour during the phases of the economic cycle. The theoretical model, based on the work of Blanchard and Katz (Brookings Papers on Economic Activity 0(1): 1–75, 1992), assumes that foreigners supply labour with a higher wage elasticity than natives. The empirical analysis, based on an unbalanced panel of 161 European regions during 1988–97, shows that following a labour demand shock the variability of native employment growth is lower the higher the proportion of foreign citizens in the local labour force. These results suggest that foreigners absorb some of the effects of the shock, shielding natives from its full impact. The analysis also reveals that the main channel mediating this ‘cushioning’ effect is the inter‐regional migration of foreign workers, followed (as a far distant second) by their higher/lower unemployment rates.