ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the long historic cycle as a labor-exporting country to various European and extra-European countries, and at the same time, becoming an in-migration country from the less developed Mediterranean countries. It analyzes the causes in terms of demand and supply – of the decline of Italian emigration to Europe; and examines the principal effects that this type of migratory movement has had on the Italian labor market. The chapter explores the chief economic and social effects that this “mass” migration has had upon the departure zones. It discusses the new phenomenon of foreign immigration to Italy from the less developed Mediterranean countries and try to place this immigration within the context of the most contradictions and difficulties in the labor market and in the Italian economy generally. After the Italian industrialists had used up the rural labor reserves in northern Italy by the second half of the 1950s, they were forced to draw on unemployed southern workers.
