Are migrants an asset in recession? Insights from Italy

Abstract

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments and suggestions by the editors and the reviewers. Claudia Villosio also gratefully acknowledges Compagnia di San Paolo and the University of Torino for financial support through Grant "progetti di Ateneo/CSP-Anno 2014-Addressing H2020".

Remain or return home: The migration intentions of first‐generation migrants in Italy

“…For instance, dependent workers may intend to return because they are expected to have achieved their migration goals, and a longer stay in Italy is not necessary, whereas independent workers may intend to remain in order to continue to gain the results of the economic investment made in Italy. Finally, unemployed and inactive workers may intend to remain because they have not (yet) realised their migration projects, also because of the effect of the economic crisis, which has hit migrants more than natives (Venturini & Villosio, ). From a theoretical point of view, this result challenges the traditional “failure‐success” dichotomy, which has deeply characterised empirical studies on return migration (Bonifazi & Heins, ).…”

“…In other words, future migration intentions should be considered in migration and integration policies. These considerations become particularly interesting in the context of the 2008 economic crisis, where migrants have seen a worsening of the labour market conditions and a general increase of their segregation in terms of low‐skilled and low‐paid jobs (Venturini & Villosio, ).…”

Integration in times of economic decline. Migrant inclusion in Southern European societies: trends and theoretical implications

“…Those parties are indeed absent in Spain and Portugal whereas in Italy, the Northern League can hardly be regarded as a far-right, extremist party (Colombo, Sciortino, and Craveri 2002;Zincone 2002 and2006), and the Golden Dawn is not a leading party in Greece, though its fascist ideology and rapid rise make the Greek situation somewhat peculiar. 6 Second, the highly segmented labour markets and large informal sector may prevent or limit competition between natives and migrants even when the economic context deteriorates, as suggested by Venturini and Villosio (2018) and Maroukis (2018). The familistic welfare model with a low level of social protection and the main responsibility for people's well-being put on families' shoulders can, paradoxically, keep competition over public services and benefits limited since private and social resources are much more crucial than public provisions in determining the quality of life, as shown by Maroukis (2018) and Esteves, Fonseca, and Malheiros (2018).…”

“…The deterioration of migrants' socio-economic conditions is clearly highlighted in the article by Venturini and Villosio (2018) which analyses the distribution of occupational profiles of natives and foreigners in the Italian labour market. Their aim is to unravel whether the economic recession has exacerbated or reduced the high segmentation of the Italian labour market with foreign workers concentrated in what the authors define as 'migrant occupations' where the share of foreigners is above average and jobs are lowquality and low-paid.…”

“…Their theoretical proposal on the evolution of political settings in response to the crisis is further unravelled in McMahon's (2018) analysis of political frameworks. The hypotheses on the labour market segmentation are tested under the economic crisis by Venturini and Villosio (2018) with quantitative methods, and by Maroukis (2017) through qualitative investigation; the latter also investigates the effects of the economic crisis on the so-called 'migrant in the family' care model (Bettio, Simonazzi, and Villa 2006). Esteves, Fonseca, and Malheiros (2018) classify migrants' different coping strategies in face of the crisis linking the macro, meso and micro levels together.…”