Education and the occupational pathways of migrants in Italy

Abstract

Most migrants who enter Italy are not needy and poorly-educated people from rural societies; rather, they are either middle-class or highly-educated youths from large cities. Survey data show that nearly 60 per cent of immigrants have attained at least an upper-secondary school certificate, although differences among countries of origin are wide. On the basis of fieldwork carried out in Milan it is possible to draw up a fourfold typology of immigrants: the 'underprivileged' (low social status and poor education), the 'underachievers' (poor education but high social status), the 'upwardly mobile' (high educational attainment but low status), the 'privileged' (high level of both education and social status). The differing characteristics of migrants explain why many of their migratory projects differ from the old stereotype of 'temporary labour migration'. Job opportunities for migrants in Italy lie at the lowest level of the occupational ladder even for the highly-educated ones. Thus, downgrading is huge. Highly-educated migrants are either unemployed or work in undeclared and occasional jobs to an extent even greater than poorly-educated ones. The reason for this is that these well-educated immigrants find it more difficult to accept the disparity between their social status in the country of origin and the jobs that they are offered, in particular if they are permanent but unskilled and onerous blue-collar jobs in small manufacturing firms in Northern and Central Italy.