I am an Associate Professor of Economic and Labour Sociology at the Department of Political and Social Sciences - University of Catania (Italy). My research activity focus on labour market, local development and social policies issues. Currently, my studies mainly concern the immigrants occupational integration, in particular the relationship with native labour force and the so-called ethnic penalty in the labour market, in terms of employment opportunities, job quality and career mobility. Phone: +3909570305207 Address: Via Vitt. Emanuele 8 - 95131 Catania
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2024
This article presents a comprehensive investigation into the socioeconomic integration of migrant... more This article presents a comprehensive investigation into the socioeconomic integration of migrants across 12 Western European countries, considering their likelihood of employment and socioeconomic status. Using the data from the European Social Survey, the study employs linear regression and probit models to achieve two aims: (a) to quantify the penalty for male and female migrants in terms of employment and socioeconomic status attainment; (b) to assess how the ethnic penalty for men and women changes based on their education and social background of origin. Results reveal that male and female migrants face a penalty in most countries under consideration, albeit with varying degrees of magnitude and characteristics. Migrants in Southern European countries exhibit a trade-off between employment and socioeconomic status attainment, while those in Central-Northern Europe experience a double penalty on both outcomes. Moreover, it emerges that the ethnic penalty in labor market attainment is more heterogeneous across migrants with different educational levels than with different social classes of origin: migrants’ social background of origin affects to a lesser extent their labor market outcomes, if compared with their human capital. Migrants with high education and social origin suffer the largest penalty, due to hurdles in leveraging their educational qualifications and social position. This pattern is particularly evident in Southern Europe, where the socioeconomic integration of migrant workers is characterized by a leveling-down process, pushing them into the lowest strata of the occupational hierarchy regardless of their education and social background.
This study aims to verify if and how migrant penalty in the labor market is associated with sub-n... more This study aims to verify if and how migrant penalty in the labor market is associated with sub-national characteristics, exploring the relevance of the regional occupational structure. We expect that a greater relevance of the share of low-status jobs at the regional level reduces the migrant penalty in terms of the probability of being employed, but increases the gap with natives in terms of job quality. We investigate this trade-o by estimating a set of hierarchical models on the EU-LFS data (2009-2015) for countries and regions. Results suggest a pattern consistent with the trade-o hypothesis, nuanced by heterogeneity at the individual level: in regions where the share of low-status jobs is higher, mid-high educated immigrants from less developed countries are less (or not) penalized compared to natives in terms of employment, while they face a stronger penalty in terms of job quality. What is more, the trade-o is not observed when considering low-educated migrants or those from high-income countries.
Migrations and social inequalities in the Italian labour market This article introduces the speci... more Migrations and social inequalities in the Italian labour market This article introduces the special issue of Sociologia del lavoro on Labour migrations, inequalities and regulation from the Great Recession to the pandemic crisis. After explaining the role that Italy and Italian scholars have played in recent decades in the development of literature on labour migrations, the authors explore the reasons justifying a special issue dedicated to this topic, focusing on the Italian case. In particular, three reasons are highlighted: the growing availability of datasets for the study of international migrations; the triple crisis (economic, migratory and pandemic) involving Europe in the last fifteen years; the full achievement of a mature phase of the migratory phenomenon by Italy. These are conditions offering the opportunity to address unexplored topics and explore open questions, with particular reference to the growing ethnic stratification of Italian society, on the one hand, and to the role that the crises have had in modifying the consolidated structures, on the other.
Job satisfaction is a desirable outcome both at the organizational and at the individual level. A... more Job satisfaction is a desirable outcome both at the organizational and at the individual level. Anyway, little is known about the gap between natives' and migrants' job satisfaction, which represents a critical issue in the light of the increasing presence of foreigner workers in the Western labor markets. In order to shed light on this issue, we estimate a number of OLS models to quantify sex-specific natives' and migrants' job satisfaction, by exploiting a particularly detailed Italian source of data (the Survey of Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens). We find that being a migrant is not associated per se with any premium or penalty in job satisfaction. When we control for the different socio-demographic features and job characteristics of natives and migrants, it turns out that migrants are more satisfied than natives. Hence, it emerges in Italy a job satisfaction paradox based on the worker's migratory status.
Occupational insertion in the agriculture represents one of the main specificities of the Mediter... more Occupational insertion in the agriculture represents one of the main specificities of the Mediterranean model of immigration. Even in contexts characterized by high levels of unemployment, immigrants find growing job opportunities in agriculture, replacing a native labour force increasingly educated and with growing expectations of social mobility that avoid the particularly demanding and socially penalizing jobs in this sector. However, the price paid by immigrants is often high: segregation in unskilled jobs, low wages, high level of precariousness and informality, and social marginalization and isolation. This article focuses on an extreme case that emphasizes binomial employment and segregation: the greenhouses of the transformed belt (fascia trasformata) in southern Sicily. In this area, immigrants represent the absolute majority of agricultural workers. However, they experience a much higher level of segregation and penalties in bad jobs compared to natives in any other part of Sicily or Italy. This immigration regime is functional to the transformation of local society as it responds to growth and defamilization of the peasant enterprise. Then, it also represents a consequence of the restructuring processes of contemporary agriculture and the global food market, where the exploitation of the growing competition between old and new migrants become the main way to contain production costs.
This article focuses on the socio-economic integration of ethnic minorities in Italy, combining t... more This article focuses on the socio-economic integration of ethnic minorities in Italy, combining the literature on migration with research on social stratification. We analyse the ethnic penalty on occupational attainment and career mobility, integrating the origin–education–destination theoretical framework with the migration status. Since ethnic penalty is an ‘umbrella concept’, we also quantify the extent to which it is mediated by differences in education and social origin. Furthermore, adopting a diachronic view of migrants’ class attainment, we verify whether the post-migration downgrading is followed by a recovery during the career, considering also mobility within the working class (standard and non-standard). Our analyses are based on the Multipurpose Survey on Households and Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens. The results show that migrants are penalized in the Italian labour market, remaining largely ‘trapped’ in the working class. This inclusion at the bottom of the class structure reduces their heterogeneity by education and by social origin. Moreover, their penalty increases during the career, except when they move from the non-standard to the standard working class. Finally, we find that the ‘unexplained’ component of ethnic penalty, net of education and social origin, is substantial and increases from the first to the current job.
The article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants in Italy in a double perspective. Fi... more The article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants in Italy in a double perspective. First, this work compares immigrants and natives in order to understand whether, and to what extent, in a country characterized overall by low social mobility, natives and migrants have the same chances for improving their social position, or the latter are disadvantaged on an ethnic basis that affects their career (research question 1). Then, the article investigates what are the factors (referring to immigrants’ human capital, socio-cultural assimilation process and ethnic network) fostering occupational mobility among immigrants (research question 2). We conduct an ordinary least squares analysis on microdata from two retrospective cross-sectional surveys, for natives and migrants, with the same sample design, questionnaire structure and variable classification, thereby allowing the comparison of results. The empirical findings confirm that intra-generational occupational mobility in Italy is overall very limited but that geographical origin is a significant factor influencing upward mobility. Thus, the existence of an ethnic penalty is confirmed. Furthermore, among migrants, high human capital improves (short-range) upward mobility, while the socio-cultural assimilation process only partly leads to economic assimilation. Conversely, the recourse to the ethnic network acts as a trap in low-qualified occupational careers, hindering an improvement of socio-economic position.
The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried... more The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried out on 1715 handlers indicate how dissatisfaction prevails among call centre representatives (CCRs) and how it is influenced by aspects related to some organisational characteristics (service delivered, size and organisational typology), on one side, and to different aspects of working conditions (contract, wage and tenure) and participants’ biographical and working profiles of CCRs (gender, age, educational attainment), on the others. However, the most interesting finding emerges by distinguishing different dimensions of job satisfaction (extrinsic and intrinsic-relational). In particular, the relationship between type of contract and job satisfaction is rather interesting. For non-permanent workers, in fact, the probability of being dissatisfied is decidedly greater if we consider the extrinsic dimension of job satisfaction. Instead, when the intrinsic-relational dimension is taking into account, atypical workers are no more dissatisfied than the permanent ones. Job insecurity and limited perspectives in terms of work alternatives, safeguards and rewards, seem to be the source of greatest dissatisfaction for Italian CCRs. This certainly does not surprise considering the Italian development model and its dualistic labour market, highly segmented between insiders and outsiders.
The article investigates the connection between changes in the structure of labour demand and the... more The article investigates the connection between changes in the structure of labour demand and the processes of immigrants' occupational integration in Italy. Adopting a within-country comparative approach which focuses on the territorial differences characterizing the country is useful in order to explain important dynamics that would remain in the shadow in a national or cross-national perspective. The Centre-North and the South represent, in fact, two deeply heterogeneous institutional contexts if we consider the labour market performance, the productive structure, the informal mechanisms of regulation between demand and supply, the migratory dynamics, and the effects of the Great Recession. The paper highlights how, and to what extent, the changes in terms of productive structure, professional stratification, and working conditions are intertwined with the «globalization» of the Italian labour market and the transformation of the native supply in the Centre-North and in the South. Based on the LFS dataset provided by ISTAT (2005-2015), the empirical evidence shows the existence of common trends and important internal differentiation, confirming that the specificities of the Italian labour market in the international scenario are evident above all in the Mezzogiorno. During the Great Recession, in the southern regions the dynamics of the immigrant labour supply have strengthened the criticalities of the structure of labour demand, favoring the torsion towards the so-called "low way to the degrowth of the Italian labour market".
The European Youth Guarantee Program targeted at young Neet represents a potential opportunity fo... more The European Youth Guarantee Program targeted at young Neet represents a potential opportunity for the innovation in active labour policies. However, its implementation in Italy was viewed with concern because of the state of public employment services, as the Southern regions have never been able to abandon the bureaucratic logic of the old public placement system. This article presents the results of research carried out in Sicily, one of the most problematic Italian regions, with reference both to the conditions of the labour market, and to the institutional performance in the field of employment policies. Despite some discouraging outcomes and inevitable problems, the research shows that the Youth Guarantee has produced some positive and unexpected results, regarding impacts on beneficiaries and the institutional strengthening of employment services.
Cambio - Rivista sulle trasformazioni sociali, 2016
In line with recent labour policy reforms, as well as the European programme known as Youth Guara... more In line with recent labour policy reforms, as well as the European programme known as Youth Guarantee, in Italy public employment services have gained a new centrality in active labour policies. However, public employment services in Italy have been only partially modernised and many critical issues still persist. As a result, a debate on the capacity of employment services to play efficiently an active role in labour policies supply has developed. This paper analyses employment centres in four areas in Sicily (one of the weakest regions in Italy in terms of institutional efficiency on labour policies), and their performance in the implementation of Youth Guarantee. The work shows the organizational change, the improved relational capacity and the institutional growth following this experience.
In questo articolo si forniscono alcuni preliminari elementi di valutazione sul funzionamento di ... more In questo articolo si forniscono alcuni preliminari elementi di valutazione sul funzionamento di Garanzia Giovani in Sicilia nei primi due anni di vita. In particolare, definita l'architettura del programma regionale all'interno delle coordinate nazionali, se ne valutano potenzialità e limiti, tanto sul piano del rinnovamento dell'azione dei servizi regionali per l'impiego, quanto sul piano dell'implementazione delle misure di politica attiva del lavoro previste.
In just a few decades, South Europe has become one of the most important destination areas for mi... more In just a few decades, South Europe has become one of the most important destination areas for migratory flows coming from high emigration countries. The immigrant labour market integration in this area, however, differs significantly compared to the experience of older Centre-North European receiving countries. Although many cross-national studies have examined the role of some macro-institutional variables that may affect the process of immigrant integration, the main reason for these differences seems to be due to the characteristics of the labour market. Italy may prove an important case study to explore this issue in greater depth, given that within the same institutional context, the labour market performances, structure and informal regulation differ significantly at a territorial level, with many Northern regions more comparable to Centre-North European countries, while those of South highlighting Mediterranean characteristics. Indeed, the aim of this study is to verify if, and to what extent, the differentiation of the labour market characteristics influence the modalities of immigrant socio-economic insertion also at a regional level within the same country. In particular, it focuses on the relationship with native labour forces and the so-called ethnic penalty, namely the differences between immigrants and natives emerging in the labour market performances when as many individual characteristics as possible are taken into account. The results of the multivariate analysis carried out confirm the existence of a trade-off among the Italian regions similarly to what is found in the comparison between South and Centre-North Europe: immigrants have better employment entry chance where the size of the secondary labour market is bigger, but at their expense in terms of job quality. However, gender specificities emerge too, making some clarifications necessary.
Analysis of the institutional characteristics and structure of host societies and the labour mark... more Analysis of the institutional characteristics and structure of host societies and the labour market has become increasingly important to explain the processes of immigrant integration. From this viewpoint, Italy would appear an optimal case study. Economic and employment imbalances between the Centre-North and the South have represented the background in which the immigrant labour market integration in terms of employment opportunities, distribution by sector, professions and working conditions have historically differed at a territorial level. This article contributes to the debate analysing territorial disparities in terms of ethnic penalty, looking at the employment performances of immigrants compared to natives: an attempt to verify if and to what extent, within the same institutional context, the differentiation of the structure and the informal regulation of the labour market lead to significantly different mechanisms of penalty. Results show that also from this viewpoint, labour market integration of immigrants in the two macro-areas seems characterised by significant differences, which may be summarised in the considerable trade-off between employment entry chances and job quality. A finding that confirms the results of recent comparative analyses between old and new European receiving countries and offers important insights to define a South European model of immigrant employment integration.
International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2024
This article presents a comprehensive investigation into the socioeconomic integration of migrant... more This article presents a comprehensive investigation into the socioeconomic integration of migrants across 12 Western European countries, considering their likelihood of employment and socioeconomic status. Using the data from the European Social Survey, the study employs linear regression and probit models to achieve two aims: (a) to quantify the penalty for male and female migrants in terms of employment and socioeconomic status attainment; (b) to assess how the ethnic penalty for men and women changes based on their education and social background of origin. Results reveal that male and female migrants face a penalty in most countries under consideration, albeit with varying degrees of magnitude and characteristics. Migrants in Southern European countries exhibit a trade-off between employment and socioeconomic status attainment, while those in Central-Northern Europe experience a double penalty on both outcomes. Moreover, it emerges that the ethnic penalty in labor market attainment is more heterogeneous across migrants with different educational levels than with different social classes of origin: migrants’ social background of origin affects to a lesser extent their labor market outcomes, if compared with their human capital. Migrants with high education and social origin suffer the largest penalty, due to hurdles in leveraging their educational qualifications and social position. This pattern is particularly evident in Southern Europe, where the socioeconomic integration of migrant workers is characterized by a leveling-down process, pushing them into the lowest strata of the occupational hierarchy regardless of their education and social background.
This study aims to verify if and how migrant penalty in the labor market is associated with sub-n... more This study aims to verify if and how migrant penalty in the labor market is associated with sub-national characteristics, exploring the relevance of the regional occupational structure. We expect that a greater relevance of the share of low-status jobs at the regional level reduces the migrant penalty in terms of the probability of being employed, but increases the gap with natives in terms of job quality. We investigate this trade-o by estimating a set of hierarchical models on the EU-LFS data (2009-2015) for countries and regions. Results suggest a pattern consistent with the trade-o hypothesis, nuanced by heterogeneity at the individual level: in regions where the share of low-status jobs is higher, mid-high educated immigrants from less developed countries are less (or not) penalized compared to natives in terms of employment, while they face a stronger penalty in terms of job quality. What is more, the trade-o is not observed when considering low-educated migrants or those from high-income countries.
Migrations and social inequalities in the Italian labour market This article introduces the speci... more Migrations and social inequalities in the Italian labour market This article introduces the special issue of Sociologia del lavoro on Labour migrations, inequalities and regulation from the Great Recession to the pandemic crisis. After explaining the role that Italy and Italian scholars have played in recent decades in the development of literature on labour migrations, the authors explore the reasons justifying a special issue dedicated to this topic, focusing on the Italian case. In particular, three reasons are highlighted: the growing availability of datasets for the study of international migrations; the triple crisis (economic, migratory and pandemic) involving Europe in the last fifteen years; the full achievement of a mature phase of the migratory phenomenon by Italy. These are conditions offering the opportunity to address unexplored topics and explore open questions, with particular reference to the growing ethnic stratification of Italian society, on the one hand, and to the role that the crises have had in modifying the consolidated structures, on the other.
Job satisfaction is a desirable outcome both at the organizational and at the individual level. A... more Job satisfaction is a desirable outcome both at the organizational and at the individual level. Anyway, little is known about the gap between natives' and migrants' job satisfaction, which represents a critical issue in the light of the increasing presence of foreigner workers in the Western labor markets. In order to shed light on this issue, we estimate a number of OLS models to quantify sex-specific natives' and migrants' job satisfaction, by exploiting a particularly detailed Italian source of data (the Survey of Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens). We find that being a migrant is not associated per se with any premium or penalty in job satisfaction. When we control for the different socio-demographic features and job characteristics of natives and migrants, it turns out that migrants are more satisfied than natives. Hence, it emerges in Italy a job satisfaction paradox based on the worker's migratory status.
Occupational insertion in the agriculture represents one of the main specificities of the Mediter... more Occupational insertion in the agriculture represents one of the main specificities of the Mediterranean model of immigration. Even in contexts characterized by high levels of unemployment, immigrants find growing job opportunities in agriculture, replacing a native labour force increasingly educated and with growing expectations of social mobility that avoid the particularly demanding and socially penalizing jobs in this sector. However, the price paid by immigrants is often high: segregation in unskilled jobs, low wages, high level of precariousness and informality, and social marginalization and isolation. This article focuses on an extreme case that emphasizes binomial employment and segregation: the greenhouses of the transformed belt (fascia trasformata) in southern Sicily. In this area, immigrants represent the absolute majority of agricultural workers. However, they experience a much higher level of segregation and penalties in bad jobs compared to natives in any other part of Sicily or Italy. This immigration regime is functional to the transformation of local society as it responds to growth and defamilization of the peasant enterprise. Then, it also represents a consequence of the restructuring processes of contemporary agriculture and the global food market, where the exploitation of the growing competition between old and new migrants become the main way to contain production costs.
This article focuses on the socio-economic integration of ethnic minorities in Italy, combining t... more This article focuses on the socio-economic integration of ethnic minorities in Italy, combining the literature on migration with research on social stratification. We analyse the ethnic penalty on occupational attainment and career mobility, integrating the origin–education–destination theoretical framework with the migration status. Since ethnic penalty is an ‘umbrella concept’, we also quantify the extent to which it is mediated by differences in education and social origin. Furthermore, adopting a diachronic view of migrants’ class attainment, we verify whether the post-migration downgrading is followed by a recovery during the career, considering also mobility within the working class (standard and non-standard). Our analyses are based on the Multipurpose Survey on Households and Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens. The results show that migrants are penalized in the Italian labour market, remaining largely ‘trapped’ in the working class. This inclusion at the bottom of the class structure reduces their heterogeneity by education and by social origin. Moreover, their penalty increases during the career, except when they move from the non-standard to the standard working class. Finally, we find that the ‘unexplained’ component of ethnic penalty, net of education and social origin, is substantial and increases from the first to the current job.
The article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants in Italy in a double perspective. Fi... more The article examines the occupational mobility of immigrants in Italy in a double perspective. First, this work compares immigrants and natives in order to understand whether, and to what extent, in a country characterized overall by low social mobility, natives and migrants have the same chances for improving their social position, or the latter are disadvantaged on an ethnic basis that affects their career (research question 1). Then, the article investigates what are the factors (referring to immigrants’ human capital, socio-cultural assimilation process and ethnic network) fostering occupational mobility among immigrants (research question 2). We conduct an ordinary least squares analysis on microdata from two retrospective cross-sectional surveys, for natives and migrants, with the same sample design, questionnaire structure and variable classification, thereby allowing the comparison of results. The empirical findings confirm that intra-generational occupational mobility in Italy is overall very limited but that geographical origin is a significant factor influencing upward mobility. Thus, the existence of an ethnic penalty is confirmed. Furthermore, among migrants, high human capital improves (short-range) upward mobility, while the socio-cultural assimilation process only partly leads to economic assimilation. Conversely, the recourse to the ethnic network acts as a trap in low-qualified occupational careers, hindering an improvement of socio-economic position.
The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried... more The article examines job satisfaction in 21 Italian call centres. The results of research carried out on 1715 handlers indicate how dissatisfaction prevails among call centre representatives (CCRs) and how it is influenced by aspects related to some organisational characteristics (service delivered, size and organisational typology), on one side, and to different aspects of working conditions (contract, wage and tenure) and participants’ biographical and working profiles of CCRs (gender, age, educational attainment), on the others. However, the most interesting finding emerges by distinguishing different dimensions of job satisfaction (extrinsic and intrinsic-relational). In particular, the relationship between type of contract and job satisfaction is rather interesting. For non-permanent workers, in fact, the probability of being dissatisfied is decidedly greater if we consider the extrinsic dimension of job satisfaction. Instead, when the intrinsic-relational dimension is taking into account, atypical workers are no more dissatisfied than the permanent ones. Job insecurity and limited perspectives in terms of work alternatives, safeguards and rewards, seem to be the source of greatest dissatisfaction for Italian CCRs. This certainly does not surprise considering the Italian development model and its dualistic labour market, highly segmented between insiders and outsiders.
The article investigates the connection between changes in the structure of labour demand and the... more The article investigates the connection between changes in the structure of labour demand and the processes of immigrants' occupational integration in Italy. Adopting a within-country comparative approach which focuses on the territorial differences characterizing the country is useful in order to explain important dynamics that would remain in the shadow in a national or cross-national perspective. The Centre-North and the South represent, in fact, two deeply heterogeneous institutional contexts if we consider the labour market performance, the productive structure, the informal mechanisms of regulation between demand and supply, the migratory dynamics, and the effects of the Great Recession. The paper highlights how, and to what extent, the changes in terms of productive structure, professional stratification, and working conditions are intertwined with the «globalization» of the Italian labour market and the transformation of the native supply in the Centre-North and in the South. Based on the LFS dataset provided by ISTAT (2005-2015), the empirical evidence shows the existence of common trends and important internal differentiation, confirming that the specificities of the Italian labour market in the international scenario are evident above all in the Mezzogiorno. During the Great Recession, in the southern regions the dynamics of the immigrant labour supply have strengthened the criticalities of the structure of labour demand, favoring the torsion towards the so-called "low way to the degrowth of the Italian labour market".
The European Youth Guarantee Program targeted at young Neet represents a potential opportunity fo... more The European Youth Guarantee Program targeted at young Neet represents a potential opportunity for the innovation in active labour policies. However, its implementation in Italy was viewed with concern because of the state of public employment services, as the Southern regions have never been able to abandon the bureaucratic logic of the old public placement system. This article presents the results of research carried out in Sicily, one of the most problematic Italian regions, with reference both to the conditions of the labour market, and to the institutional performance in the field of employment policies. Despite some discouraging outcomes and inevitable problems, the research shows that the Youth Guarantee has produced some positive and unexpected results, regarding impacts on beneficiaries and the institutional strengthening of employment services.
Cambio - Rivista sulle trasformazioni sociali, 2016
In line with recent labour policy reforms, as well as the European programme known as Youth Guara... more In line with recent labour policy reforms, as well as the European programme known as Youth Guarantee, in Italy public employment services have gained a new centrality in active labour policies. However, public employment services in Italy have been only partially modernised and many critical issues still persist. As a result, a debate on the capacity of employment services to play efficiently an active role in labour policies supply has developed. This paper analyses employment centres in four areas in Sicily (one of the weakest regions in Italy in terms of institutional efficiency on labour policies), and their performance in the implementation of Youth Guarantee. The work shows the organizational change, the improved relational capacity and the institutional growth following this experience.
In questo articolo si forniscono alcuni preliminari elementi di valutazione sul funzionamento di ... more In questo articolo si forniscono alcuni preliminari elementi di valutazione sul funzionamento di Garanzia Giovani in Sicilia nei primi due anni di vita. In particolare, definita l'architettura del programma regionale all'interno delle coordinate nazionali, se ne valutano potenzialità e limiti, tanto sul piano del rinnovamento dell'azione dei servizi regionali per l'impiego, quanto sul piano dell'implementazione delle misure di politica attiva del lavoro previste.
In just a few decades, South Europe has become one of the most important destination areas for mi... more In just a few decades, South Europe has become one of the most important destination areas for migratory flows coming from high emigration countries. The immigrant labour market integration in this area, however, differs significantly compared to the experience of older Centre-North European receiving countries. Although many cross-national studies have examined the role of some macro-institutional variables that may affect the process of immigrant integration, the main reason for these differences seems to be due to the characteristics of the labour market. Italy may prove an important case study to explore this issue in greater depth, given that within the same institutional context, the labour market performances, structure and informal regulation differ significantly at a territorial level, with many Northern regions more comparable to Centre-North European countries, while those of South highlighting Mediterranean characteristics. Indeed, the aim of this study is to verify if, and to what extent, the differentiation of the labour market characteristics influence the modalities of immigrant socio-economic insertion also at a regional level within the same country. In particular, it focuses on the relationship with native labour forces and the so-called ethnic penalty, namely the differences between immigrants and natives emerging in the labour market performances when as many individual characteristics as possible are taken into account. The results of the multivariate analysis carried out confirm the existence of a trade-off among the Italian regions similarly to what is found in the comparison between South and Centre-North Europe: immigrants have better employment entry chance where the size of the secondary labour market is bigger, but at their expense in terms of job quality. However, gender specificities emerge too, making some clarifications necessary.
Analysis of the institutional characteristics and structure of host societies and the labour mark... more Analysis of the institutional characteristics and structure of host societies and the labour market has become increasingly important to explain the processes of immigrant integration. From this viewpoint, Italy would appear an optimal case study. Economic and employment imbalances between the Centre-North and the South have represented the background in which the immigrant labour market integration in terms of employment opportunities, distribution by sector, professions and working conditions have historically differed at a territorial level. This article contributes to the debate analysing territorial disparities in terms of ethnic penalty, looking at the employment performances of immigrants compared to natives: an attempt to verify if and to what extent, within the same institutional context, the differentiation of the structure and the informal regulation of the labour market lead to significantly different mechanisms of penalty. Results show that also from this viewpoint, labour market integration of immigrants in the two macro-areas seems characterised by significant differences, which may be summarised in the considerable trade-off between employment entry chances and job quality. A finding that confirms the results of recent comparative analyses between old and new European receiving countries and offers important insights to define a South European model of immigrant employment integration.
Il volume analizza le varie dimensioni del radicamento e della riproduzione del fenomeno mafioso ... more Il volume analizza le varie dimensioni del radicamento e della riproduzione del fenomeno mafioso affidandosi a una pluralità di strumenti di indagine, qualitativi e quantitativi. In particolare, concentrandosi sulla diffusione e il profilo attuale del fenomeno estorsivo in Sicilia orientale, il testo indaga la pervasività delle estorsioni in una fase storica caratterizzata da significativi successi sul piano del contrasto alla mafia e da una crisi economica che ha indebolito la disponibilità degli operatori economici a pagare.
Il volume si articola in tre parti tra loro integrate, anche se diverse per obiettivi conoscitivi... more Il volume si articola in tre parti tra loro integrate, anche se diverse per obiettivi conoscitivi e metodologie utilizzate. La prima inquadra le specificità dell’inserimento occupazionale dei migranti a Catania nel più ampio scenario dell’evoluzione dell’immigrazione a livello regionale e nazionale. Nella seconda, invece, si ricostruiscono i profili formativi, le condizioni occupazionali e i percorsi di lavoro degli immigrati nel contesto locale. La terza, infine, è dedicata alle strategie di impresa, alle politiche della manodopera e alle potenzialità della domanda e dell’offerta di lavoro immigrato nel settore della ristorazione sul territorio catanese, con particolare riferimento alla dimensione etnica e/o esotica del fenomeno.
In book: Avola M., Consoli M.T. (a cura di), Alle pendici dell’etnico. L’offerta di lavoro degli immigrati: una risorsa per il settore della ristorazione e del turismo catanese? - Publisher: Bonanno, 2013
In book: Avola M., Consoli M.T. (a cura di), Alle pendici dell’etnico. L’offerta di lavoro degli immigrati: una risorsa per il settore della ristorazione e del turismo catanese? - Publisher: Bonanno, 2013
In book: Cortese A. (a cura di), Carriere mobili. Percorsi di transizione al lavoro di giovani istruiti nel Mezzogiorno - Publisher: Franco Angeli, 2012
In book: Cortese A. (a cura di), Carriere mobili. Percorsi di transizione al lavoro di giovani istruiti nel Mezzogiorno - Publisher: Franco Angeli, 2012
Le politiche del lavoro sono diventate il banco di prova più difficile per i welfare europei. In ... more Le politiche del lavoro sono diventate il banco di prova più difficile per i welfare europei. In Italia lo strumento prioritario per limitare i fenomeni di mismatch tra domanda e offerta è stato individuato nei servizi per l’impiego che, con la riforma degli anni novanta, hanno sostituito il vecchio sistema del collocamento. Tuttavia, il processo di trasformazione presenta forti differenziazioni territoriali. Le regioni meridionali, più bisognose di politiche attive del lavoro, presentano i deficit maggiori. In Sicilia, poi, in ragione dell’autonomia statutaria, le nuove norme sono state recepite con molto ritardo e l’elefantiasi di una macchina organizzativa cresciuta nelle pieghe delle politiche assistenziali ha reso lungo e faticoso il processo di attuazione. Al deficit normativo si sono cumulate carenze tecnologiche e infrastrutturali, resistenze culturali e organizzative. Il volume presenta i risultati di una ricerca-intervento condotta presso i Centri per l’impiego del Calatino Sud-Simeto, in cui è stato realizzato un interessante esperimento di inserimento delle politiche del lavoro e della riforma all’interno di un percorso di politiche di sviluppo locale avviato ormai da un quindicennio. La rilevanza dei risultati dell’analisi condotta travalica la dimensione locale e fa emergere il complesso intreccio tra problemi di governance e dimensioni organizzative e culturali che condizionano l’attuazione delle politiche del lavoro, indicando possibili linee di intervento per opporsi alle resistenze al cambiamento.
In book: Consoli M.T. (a cura di), Il fenomeno migratorio nell’Europa del Sud. Il caso siciliano tra stanzialità e transizione - Publisher: Franco Angeli, 2009
In book: Avola M., Melfa D., Nicolosi G. (a cura di), Immigrati nella “città dell’elefante”. Regolarizzazione, integrazione culturale e mercato del lavoro - Publisher: Bonanno, 2007
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