ABSTRACT
The crisis of the industrial system has an important impact on the organization of work and the condition of workers. As G. Noiriel writes, in Europe the role of migration and of migrants has been underplayed, unlike in the United States and in Canada, where migration has been a constitutive dimension of the society. The crisis of the republican integration model must also be understood in the frame of the development of globalized social relations. In a general frame of not recognizing migration as permanent, European countries have shown important differences in migratory and integration policies and in the social representation of migration. Immigration into Italy for the purpose of work is a quite new phenomenon in the general landscape of migrations in Europe. The role of work in social identities has also been limited, and this has opened a new space for identities which seemed about to disappear, such as family cohesion and inscription into a community.
