ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the socio-economic and the legal/institutional characteristics of international migrants’ incorporation into the Italian labour market. Our interpretation of the statistical evidence available with respect to immigrant’s labour insertion combines the role played by the local characteristics of labour force demand, the normative constraints generated by immigration policies – and more broadly by the institutional framework which organizes economic relationships – and the role performed by migrants’ network. The assumption upon which the analysis we present is concerned with the complexity of the ways in which migrants have accessed the Italian labour market so far. In general, it is linked with the whole set of changes that have produced the shift of Western economies from a Fordist to a post-Fordist model (Mingione, 1997). Reference is also made to a series of expounding factors that overcome the limitations of former approaches. These include, first, interpretations that solely consider the needs of the economic systems of the countries where migrant flows are spontaneously directed, or where they are attracted/kept away by means of incentives/ disincentives policies (Moulier-Boutang, 1998; Piore, 1983). Second, it concerns alternative views boasting the capacities of migrants’ social networks – that are often ‘ethnically’ typified – to define the conditions where the newcomers’ economic insertion occurs (Massey and Espinosa, 1997; Portes, 1995).
