Keywords

Immigration as a Political Issue

Italy is heading towards its third consecutive decade of intense immigration. In these years, many of the institutional distortions that characterise the Italian labour market have intertwined with the integration of immigrants into workplaces. Among these, at least three should be mentioned: (1) a lack of investment in the skills of the employable population; (2) the accompanying phenomenon of the delocalisation of production with low investment in workers’ skills; and (3) the reduction of labour-related guarantees in accordance with a neo-liberal model that would like employment to be flexible and market-orientated (Antonioli et al., 2011; Cattani & Pedrini, 2021).

In recent decades, the neo-liberal perspective has changed the view of the migration phenomenon in Italy. At the same time, due to its position in the centre of the Mediterranean, Italy has over recent years become a “border interface” (Schmoll, 2006), finding itself at the centre of different migratory currents that also involve different types of migrants for different destination countries. For years, Italian governments have attempted to define and redefine “the solution” to the migration phenomenon, trying to “fix” the problem by considering it as something temporary and contingent. The proposed policy lines have never been defined to include needs related to country of origin, time of arrival, welfare, or access to the labour market, health services or protection for families and minors. The prevailing perspective, particularly since 2000, has been that of “controlling the flow of entry” as a policing and security action. The workforce demands of the economic world are solved through entry quotas, temporary entry visas and a certain tolerance towards irregular entries.

These developments present a clear testimony to the inability of the Italian public administration to manage both the internal demand for workforce and the emergencies arising from the economic cycles. The chronic lack of manpower for the lowest jobs on the occupational scale has always been the factor urging the entry and recall of workers from abroad. This discordance between the actual demand and the political commitment has been clearly visible in discursive practices of the political forces and the media in response to breaking news. After the 2008 crisis, regulated flows have been drastically reduced, forcing immigrants and business networks to rely on other entry channels that are much more difficult to monitor, such as access without a permit, family reunifications and tourist visas. Since then, the failure to match labour supply and demand has become even more evident. Right-wing governments have nurtured the idea of offering more control and more police, while left-wing governments have usually loosened control, supporting services and access to the labour market through funding, among other things, language courses, which were definitively abolished by the populist Lega-M5S government of 2018–2019. The same government also closed ports and made the access of migrants and their rescue at sea illegal. The public debate has developed in recent years around the narrative that the management of immigrants in Italy was an “organisational disaster” that the right wing wanted to remedy by “closing every border” through the police force.

The result of these failures is certified by the massive presence of immigrants in the poorer segments of the population. It should also be remembered that governments have often acted with contradictory policies. For example, during the Renzi (centre-left) government between 2014 and 2016, job security deteriorated, and agreements were made with Libya to reduce arrivals by sea. At the same time, during the populist government of 2018–2019, the citizenship income measure was launched to support the poorest people, the largest share of whom are immigrants. But despite these and other contradictions, governments have always tried to demonstrate that they favour migration that is necessary for vacant jobs.

This inconsistency in policies and these contradictions in rules for the integration of immigrants reveal two competing institutional logics:Footnote 1 one aimed at following the demands of the market, which we define as market-based, and another aimed at the welfare of the community and its needs, which we define as community-based. These two institutional logics are the latent patterns of material practices and values that Italy has built over the decades. As a result, several contradictory practices can be identified in practical solutions adopted during the past decades in both scenarios; solutions that have turned into a constitutive part of immigrants’ labour integration processes.

The discussion presented here is supported by the review of a large volume of secondary data. Documentary material we analysed contained reports and documentation derived from primary data available in academic publications and on government agencies’ websites, official documents on immigrants’ labour integration, journalistic investigations and court documents related to the Riace case.Footnote 2 All these field materials present an ideal ground for an analysis of the contradictions, inconsistencies and non-linearity of governmental actions. The institutional logic approach has been chosen as a theoretical framework, as it is truly useful in an attempt to understand a complex phenomenon such as the labour integration of migrants.

Institutional Logics and Organisational Practices

As has been shown in many studies, migration to Southern Europe is perhaps the most difficult both to circumscribe and to describe. Apart from a few studies that addressed specific sectors such as farming (Giarè et al., 2020), home care (Scrinzi, 2018), construction (Shepherd et al., 2021), manufacturing (Venturini & Villosio, 2017), and self-employment (Lintner, 2018), labour integration studies reveal a dense fabric of plots and relationships that people build in their daily practices which allow them to encounter expected and unexpected situations, where market rules are of little help. With the aim of following immigrants’ trajectories, we looked at how people actually cope with constraints experienced in various local settings.

The institutional logics approach is one of several recent approaches that try to bring together macro and micro perspectives to analyse complex organisational situations. This theoretical framework provides an insight that explains how institutions both enable and constrain action (Thornton et al., 2012, p. vi). The concept of institutional logics helps to show that organisations are incrementally constructed according to multiple tracks, which may be linked to political choices, the historical development of welfare and labour systems or the development of local expertise. Collective actors, such as employment agency operators and employers’ associations, influence the choices of both policy makers and immigrants, as do the international regulators and the intrinsic complexity of the “migration machine” (Greenwood et al., 2002; Plsek & Wilson, 2001). Some studies have revealed the centrality of rituals and public communication in orientating policy choices (Deephouse & Heugens, 2009). Such contributions offer a dynamic view of integration services, often misleadingly represented as a stable framework. In practice, this framework is incrementally reinforced by elements that support a long-term logic of action (Reay & Hinings, 2009). The simultaneous focus on both the institutional logics and on actual practices, the latter reinforced by, for example, Nicolini et al. (2003), or Gherardi (2016), makes it possible to counterpose the rational choice paradigm with new, relational ways of exploring organisations. As Lounsbury and colleagues have pointed out, such views have paved the way for a stream of research that can be called “a practice-driven institutionalism”, which allows researchers to focus on “the collective performance of institutions as grounded in (and therefore inseparable from) the situated, emergent and generative practices that comprise institutions” (Lounsbury et al., 2021, p. 5).

Market- and Community-Based Institutional Logics

As shown in Table 8.1, the actions of the Italian government in the context of the labour market seem to follow on the one hand, a logic according to which enterprises and economic sectors are the indirect regulators of flows and entries into the labour market; and on the other hand, a logic of a solidaristic vision where access to the labour market is only one of the critical aspects of immigration. This second logic, only slightly recognisable in governmental actions, is instead widespread among NGOs, informal groups and local communities.

Table 8.1 Institutional logics for immigrants’ integration, adapted from Thornton (2004)
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On a symbolic level, the market logic focuses on the difficulty of finding workers for less qualified positions, and on the need for business organisations to reduce labour costs and rules for the stability of their contracts. The community-based logic, on the other hand, recommends following the path of informality and spontaneous solidarity in various social circles such as the Catholic communities, the political Left, and the non-profit sector (Ambrosini, 2011). According to the latter logic, the market is simply a stimulus to look for the best access to an occupation, on the assumption that for social and small-medium enterprises, immigrant workers are a resource, as they will become integrated sooner or later into the local networks in cities and towns. The actual interventions are guided above all by people’s needs, and their need to find security and a stable job. The best example of such reasoning is the common event of immigrant women being routed to home care services for the elderly. In the last 20 years, this route has been particularly used by solidarity circles, which are aware of the strong demand for such services.

Since 2000 there have been two clear channels of access to the labour market in Italy: one linked to sectoral quotas provided by the government from year to year by decree, but clearly insufficient to cope with the complexity of the economic sectors; and the other consisting of circumventing the rules and allowing regularisation if immigrants found any employer in the territory (sometimes real employers were mixed with fictitious employers).Footnote 3

The alliance between informal networks, word-of-mouth, and the needs of families and businesses fuelled the attempt to circumvent employment regulations, multiplying the ways in which migrants entered Italian territory. Many analyses confirmed that without this massive and confusing entry, it would not have been possible to meet the growing demand for labour in care services and small businesses.

Both these logics have become radicalised in recent years. On the one hand, businesses demanded, and obtained, an increasing flexibilisation of employment contracts; on the other hand, the third sector went through various attempts to make the community-based model profitable and widespread.

Especially interesting is the combination of these logics in terms of actual arrangements. In fact, both logics have always relied on similar practices, which are not always consistent with the two opposing logics. Such hybrid practices make clear the incoherence and inconsistency of the Italian model. To begin with, the institutional logic orientated towards the needs of the market and the capital permits entrepreneurs to support certain welfare practices. At the same time, initiatives consistent with the community-based logic can intertwine with business practices that are helpful to immigrants. This combination has been pursued so extensively that sometimes intervention by the courts has been required to mitigate excesses.

The Community-Based Model: The Riace Ambiguity

Riace is a small Calabrian village of 1825 inhabitants that has become world famous thanks to its model of welcoming migrants, developed in the late 1990s. The beginning of what became known as the Riace Model is usually traced back to 1998, when 200 refugees from Kurdistan arrived on the Calabrian coast by boat. The Città Futura Association was created at the same time, to help the newly landed immigrants by hosting them in old or abandoned houses whose owners had emigrated.

Thanks to the innovative model of inclusion developed year on year, Riace was able to apply the SPRAR model for the Calabria Region (the acronym stands for the Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees, which lasted until 2018). The novelty of this event lay in how the community-based logic was adopted by a municipality in a depressed and remote area. The mayor, Mimmo (Domenico) Lucano, activated the system in the municipality, while also gaining some external financing. The system supported micro-entrepreneurial activities in handicrafts, agriculture and eco-tourism, which resulted in jobs for both immigrants and locals. The Riace Model earned admiration all over the world, as it not only accepted asylum seekers, but also helped them and its own inhabitants to design new life paths. The widespread reception of immigrants in Riace over almost two decades has also revitalised a village that was economically suffering and demographically depopulated. In 2006, Mimmo Lucano was listed by Fortune as one of the 50 most influential people in the world.

The main features of the Riace Model as introduced by Lucano were as follows:

  1. 1.

    Local housing resources were used to support widespread reception and mobility of people, in line with suggestions by many scholars (see e.g. Schönfelder & Axhausen, 2003).

  2. 2.

    In order to cover the delays in the arrival of national funding for hosting projects, a kind of virtual currency was created and used in Riace. A special banknote was created and accepted in local economic activities; it was converted into euros as soon as the national funds were disbursed by the national Government.

  3. 3.

    Internships were used to integrate both immigrants and Riace residents into local economic activities, thus providing a new economic and social opportunity for the local citizens, who could benefit from the reception system for asylum seekers.

  4. 4.

    Many immigrants and residents found employment in local workshops, revitalising trades that had faded in previous years, such as ceramics, handloom weaving and wool spinning, but also organising workshops for food conservation, milk processing, baking bread and producing chocolate. An old mill with millstones was restored and provided with modern equipment to produce olive oil. In 2018, a didactic farm was also inaugurated in Riace, where immigrants and locals could together breed animals and cultivate local products with ecologically sustainable methods. In addition, thanks to a loan of €51,000 provided by Banca Etica, several long-abandoned houses were transformed (with the permission of their owners) into tourist accommodation.Footnote 4 At the same time, ecotourism initiatives were promoted. A new recycling system offered further opportunities for employment.

  5. 5.

    The repopulation of the village also revitalised the local educational circuit: schools at all levels (starting with daycare), recreated classes that had disappeared due to the demographic crisis.

In Riace, the path to work has been opened due to intense activities, which were possible without the presence of companies asking for workers. Amazingly, these activities brought together the few opportunities in the area, and from these few resources a network of relationships that had been lost was reborn.

I always thought that welcoming people into depopulated villages helped to revive a sense of identity. Communities where only natives live are, in my opinion, not an ideal model; there is no growth, no cross-fertilisation in places like these. I have always considered what we have created over the years as something spontaneous and beyond borders. (Mimmo Lucano)Footnote 5

Houses were empty and the local economy was paralysed. (Mimmo Lucano)Footnote 6

In this context, the prevalence of community-based logic is very clear. Mimmo Lucano placed the key to his interventions in the concept of solidarity within a community. The creation of employment opportunities in an abandoned territory was possible because he managed to convince others that the task of a community is to be ready to welcome strangers. This belief probably led him to make some ambiguous arrangements that led to him being accused in 2018 of misappropriating resources for personal gain. Various media enquiries confirmed that these actions were dictated by a largely symbolic approach to rules and regulations. His commitment to the community and to the various actions serving to promote the territory and various businesses came first. The following excerpt is from what the judges wrote when they sentenced the former mayor, together with 17 collaborators, to 13 years in prison and a massive €700,000 fine.

[The recordings show a] predatory logic of the public resources coming from the SPRAR, CAS and MSNA projects, increasingly subservient to their personal appetites, often declined in political terms, and satisfied by exploiting to their advantage the system of migrant reception which, from being the primary and appreciable objective of those subsidies, became a convenient screen behind which to conceal the conspicuous embezzlement of public money that they carried out, for exclusively individual ends. (1st Grade Court Sentence)

The judges tried precisely the “arrangements” that the solidaristic logic imposes on those who act in a complex context, which includes the use of public funds. With those funds, the mayor provided opportunities to open workshops and to create social enterprises that would strengthen inclusion and integration in the village. Some of these funds were used to buy an olive oil mill and reopen olive oil production, creating opportunities for the local population and immigrants alike. The tactic was to fill abstract official rules with actual content that was justified by traditional local practices. Even at present, when many public funds have been closed, the reputation of some of the businesses thus created in the village of Riace continues:

They learn about it by word of mouth. Among them are those who have completed their reception projects in the SAI network but don’t know where to go. There are also those who are escaping from the violence of their families. An example? Last week a pregnant Nigerian woman arrived here with two children. She came here because she knew they would find an open door, because despite everything we don’t leave anyone on the street. (Mimmo Lucano)Footnote 7

This quote also confirms the institutional logic adopted, and it emphasises that the arrangements to make integration possible still take place in the area. Among these initiatives is the above-mentioned cooperative for the collection of waste for recycling, which is carried out with the help of donkeys as the streets of the village are too narrow to allow cars to pass. In this case, the organisational form is unique, but even this marks a continuing relationship between institutional logics and organisational practices.

To understand the Riace case better, it is important to point out that the creation of inclusive paths was possible because some rules, which govern the management of public funds as well as economic services of general interest, were interpreted in a broad way and/or were not completely observed. Yet it must be emphasised that the purpose was not to act illegally, but to support a system that was understood in terms of its positive effects on immigrants and the local territory. The social and economic development generated by the Riace version of the system has, despite some formal irregularities, embodied the community-based institutional logic through the arrangements that impacted the lives and freedoms of individuals. Those arrangements are supported by a communitarian vision:

It might sound like an exaggeration, but Riace has somehow challenged the capitalist system with the force of irreverence and disrespect. (Mimmo Lucano)Footnote 8

There are still many activities going on in the Global Village of Riace. The textile and carpentry workshops, the social bakery, the Human Rights library and Radio Aut are still active. There is also a food bank that provides each family in need with a weekly shopping voucher, and the medical clinic, where three doctors examine (free of charge) both refugees and residents.

Riace’s peculiarity is not only the result of the project and the vision of one person (the mayor) and a small group of his collaborators; it is also a brilliant case of organisational practices that have helped to develop a system of associations and cooperatives which supported the project itself.

Gender and Work Integration: A Complex Covenant

Another useful case of labour integration in Italy is that relating to the employment status of immigrant women. In Italy, the majority (52%) of immigrants are women, which translates to 2.6 million women from 198 different countries and territories of the world, particularly from Romania, Albania and Morocco. The percentage of employed women is slightly lower at 42%, similar to the employment rate for Italian women. Employment for more than half of the women is limited to three occupations: domestic helpers, carers and office and commercial cleaners (IDOS, 2021).

This picture confirms the existence of a “hidden” space in which the female labour force is most frequently found. This situation has been further aggravated by the pandemic; reports confirm that women’s difficulties were intensified by structural inequalities, such as horizontal segregation that is particularly widespread in Italy. At the same time, as intersectionality scholars have highlighted (Cho et al., 2013), the employment difficulties of the female workforce are compounded by the difficulties of being immigrants and by working in less visible sectors with low protection contracts.

Women are the workers most involved in processes of labour integration that we have defined as community-based, and this means they are most sought after in informal circuits that respond to the demand for home care, care services and support to businesses. In most cases, their migration route follows two flows: one by sea or across unmanned borders, and the other pseudo-legal one that allows permanent employment relationships to be established. Their first jobs are often exhausting, such as harvesting; then follows a move to urban areas and sectors where service labour is sought, such as in domestic care services and care for the elderly and disabled. In this area, too, the Italian state fails to clearly define the access processes and temporary contracts, even after recent reforms of employment contracting in a liberalist spirit. But these spaces of underpaid employment do not affect all women workers in the same way. In fact, it has been argued for many years that the slowness and cumbersomeness of the mechanisms for granting residence permits to immigrant women forces them to accept any kind of employment, which in some cases amounts to exploitation and violence.

Most immigrants (men and women) have work experience before leaving their country of origin; their enrolment into the Italian labour market is, in general, characterised by experiences in precarious contexts but for which a higher salary (compared with their national standards) is paid. This scenario is due to various circumstances such as a lack of knowledge of the language or the failure to recognise any qualifications obtained abroad (in particular, outside the borders of the European Union). These circumstances apply particularly often to foreign women who, in Italy, see their employment chances greatly reduced and are directed to specific segments of the job market (Istat, 2018).

According to a survey by Istat (2018), the work and employment paths of immigrants in Italy are characterised by an occupational downgrading, and by a more general entrapment in ethnic networks, which often creates an obstacle to occupational careers. However, the same ethnic networks that often contribute to slowing down the employment of foreigners can, in some circumstances, favour other employment paths, such as entrepreneurial ones. A recent analysis conducted on the trend of foreign companies in Italy disaggregated by gender shows that the entrepreneurial behaviour of immigrant women is still strongly influenced by the ethnic contexts of origin.

Colombelli et al. (2020) analysed the trend of foreign companies in Italy from 2002 to 2013 and observed some elements that allow us to make hypotheses about the behaviour of foreign (especially women) entrepreneurs in Italy. The analyses conducted by the authors suggest that female businesses led by foreign women also have the potential to push other foreign women to create new entrepreneurial initiatives. Through “learning-by-example” mechanisms, individuals learn new skills inspired by the observation of role models with whom they can identify (Gibson, 2004). According to the role identification theory, however, the degree of similarity between the would-be entrepreneur and the role model matters. The extent to which the role model inspires the would-be entrepreneur depends upon the perceived compatibility between the role model behaviour and their own behavioural opportunities (Slack, 2005). It follows that women entrepreneurs—especially if they come from similar cultural backgrounds—seem to be a source of positive inspiration for other women, who see in them an example and a chance for personal and professional growth and emancipation.

Another aspect highlighted by the research is that foreign women seem more likely to develop strong bonds and connections. Positive testimonies describe success as the result of meeting the right people at the right time. These encounters, which are often connoted by relevant solidarity logics, confirm that there are no pathways and/or programmes that are structured by the reception systems; rather, they are the result of bottom-up actions attentive to the opportunities of the moment.

These situations reveal a complexity that characterises the life of a working woman in Italy, to which are added the burdens of being an immigrant. The presence of informal welfare systems makes it possible to deal with the problems related to the lack of services, but the same informality can lead to non-compliance with labour contracts, not granting time off and the lack of full recognition of welfare rights for immigrant families and their children (Catanzaro & Colombo, 2009). These developments can never be interpreted in one way only. Ambiguous situations are in many cases attractive to women workers who can, for example, move faster in a market with a high demand for labour (Scaglioni & Diodati, 2021). Also, as sometimes happens, women workers can denounce the situation and obtain financial benefits to which they are entitled once they have the security of a work permit. One could say that these irregular practices function as compensation for the many problematic management situations encountered by women in their various insertion pathways (see also Chap. 6).

Final Remarks

As Dalla Zuanna (2013, p. 47) pointed out, it is necessary to “look at the concreteness of the (integration) process because the implicit model of migrant integration in Italy is defined as a mixture of regulations and practices that have been built up over the last twenty years”. The context described confirms the lack of a functioning system of immigration laws, and the absence of a system of procedures that would favour an effective integration of migrant citizens.

It should also be stressed that the lack of an a priori defined integration model in Italy has not entirely prevented the development of some positive examples of immigrants’ integration. Local practices have been the effective response to various situations, as we have seen in the case of Riace and women entrepreneurs. Effective adaptation tactics have had a great impact on immigrants’ labour integration without, however, ever becoming the institutional logic in the country. While policy makers have failed in recent decades to build an effective system for the integration of immigrants, the history and traditions of Italy have in some cases contributed, albeit indirectly, to the establishment of bottom-up integration pathways (especially within the labour market).

Historically, Italy appears very differentiated: a nation that remains strongly rooted in local and regional identities and traditions. While it is true that the majority of immigrants in Italy are located in the productive areas of the country (the north-east and north-west), it is also true that the national production chain is strongly connected to small towns and suburban areas, especially in provinces around large urban centres (Dalla Zuanna, 2013; Di Sciullo, 2020). This aspect has allowed immigrants to be territorially distributed throughout Italy, in some cases even occupying certain remote areas (known as fragile areas, their fragility due to the lack of services and infrastructure and their geographically remote location; Osti & Ventura, 2012).

Italy has been experimenting with the consolidation of the presence of immigrant citizens whose settlement has taken on the character of ethnic polycentrism (Pittau, 1999), taking into consideration different issues and characteristics in different local settings. No wonder that in such a situation an evident competition between two institutional logics emerges. Yet multiple studies and analyses conducted in recent years have revealed the richness of solutions that, rather than deriving directly from these institutional logics, rely on specific local opportunities that are difficult to reproduce. As seen in the Riace story, and in women’s access to various paths to employment and job security, a fundamental role is played by local arrangements and eventually by particularly relevant people who become the “directors” of the various implemented actions.

Such arrangements are presented in Table 8.2, where we attempt to map those organisational practices that put the two logics in dialogue with each other, through a multiplicity of arrangements made by those who pursue these institutional logics as their priority objective. In this way, we hope to present a reliable description of the Italian situation that is typical of the recent decades.

Table 8.2 Arrangements provided at situated organisational practices level for immigrants
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Public discourses and institutional logics fight their battles in the political arena and the media, but locally they are characterised by continuous agreements and arrangements which allow a slow but progressive path for immigrants’ integration into the Italian labour system. This obviously does not solve the weaknesses of the inequality structure of the labour system in Italy. Immigrants must go through all the classic routes of entering at the lowest level of rights: they face precariousness, contractual and wage discrimination, and lack of services and welfare. Each person entering the labour market must find some kind of balance that may turn into security and guaranteed rights over time. This final goal is supported both by those actors who support the market-based system and by those who support the community-based logic.

These arrangements are particularly useful in the Italian context because they allow the actors to use the different institutional logics in combination with the organisational context. The organisational practices seem to confirm what has already been indicated by Gherardi (2016), who highlighted the role of “agencement” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1988; Callon, 2007), and “formativeness”. These two characteristics of the practices underline the situated nature of actions that take place outside of established models.

These practices in the concept of agencement become a space for learning awareness that allows us to decipher the practice context and understand it from the perspective of labour integration (agency). With the concept of formativeness, we refer to the learning of practices that immigrants perform in “constructing” in turn the conditions for integration. The practices of agencement and formativeness allow different life histories to intertwine with the practices needed to best orientate their own and others’ trajectories. It is, therefore, important to study at the same time the institutional logics followed by traditional actors (legislators, business associations, trade unions) and those followed by the enormous constellation of local networks (agencies, families, informal groups and networks, NGOs).

Over the years, and through continuous tinkering, Italy has learned both to cope with the limits of its non-model and to distribute competitive advantages, in ways that sometimes privilege the fabric of the productive world, and sometimes that of social networks animated by inclusion intentions. In this dialectic, opportunities and constraints are distributed without a precise rule. It is up to immigrant workers to decipher these complexities, as organisational practices may sometimes foster trajectories within the classic entrepreneurial world, while at other times they favour trajectories that intertwine with the third sector and the worlds of solidarity. Yet the overall outcome remains problematic: Italy may continue to hide behind institutional logics (more market vs more solidarity), turning its gaze away from the incremental opportunities of the inclusion system that could guarantee a better programming of the markets and a better response to the needs of the immigrant labour force.