ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a general overview of the immigration situation in Italy and highlights a number of variables which have contributed to the development of a migratory model specific to Italy. Castles (1995) has proposed a tripartite conceptual model to categorise the response of highly developed countries to immigration. Firstly, the differential exclusion model, whereby migrants are integrated into specific areas of society, but are denied access to other areas. This would normally mean integration into the labour market but exclusion from citizenship, political participation and welfare. Secondly, the assimilationist model, which aims to impose a one-sided process of adaptation onto migrants, making them indistinguishable from the majority population. Finally, the pluralist model which accepts migrants' cultural and social diversity and gives them equal rights. Italy cannot be definitively positioned within any of these models, in part because many aspects of the Italian immigration debate have yet to be properly defined and some have yet to emerge. The difficulty in establishing an Italian model can be partly attributed to the late institutional response to the issue. Prior to state intervention in the 1980s, the voluntary sector was the principal regulator of immigration. Its intervention however, was largely informal and uncoordinated. In the late 1980s, Favaro and Bordogna (1989) argued that Italy's vision of immigration was governed by three stages. Stage one attempted to control entry, stage two attempted to control the duration of the migrant workers' stay and stage three provided incentives for the migrant worker to return home. Bonini (1987) argued that Italian migration policy was marked by a dual and contradictory approach, characterised by hospitality and understanding, but also a desire to control the phenomenon. These definitions were both valid, but in the early 1990s, the Italian model was also being shaped by wider factors. Italy's legacy as a country of emigration, the prominence of the voluntary sector and women's involvement in the migratory process were important factors which differentiated Italy from Northern European models of migration.
