International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Improving Access to Labour market Information for migrants and employers
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Annex
Annex 2.I: the ISMU survey
The ISMU survey is an annual survey, initiated in 2001, in which a representative
sample of about 8,000 documented and undocumented migrants residing in
the Lombardy region, one of Italy’s largest (8% of the Italian territory), most
populated (9.6 million inhabitants in 2008, about 16% of the Italian population),
and wealthiest regions, is interviewed. It also has the largest migrant population
of both documented (23% of the entire migrant population legally residing in Italy
in 2005) and undocumented migrants (22% of the amnesty applications in the last
regularization process in 2002). The ISMU survey is conducted by the Fondazione
ISMU (Iniziative e Studi sulla Multietnicità), an autonomous and independent
organization promoting studies, research and projects on multi-ethnic and multicultural
society, and focusing in particular on the phenomenon of international
migrations (www.ismu.org).
The interview questionnaire contains a variety of questions on individual
characteristics (such as demographics, educational level, labour market outcomes,
legal status) and household characteristics (for example, the number of household
members in Italy, family members abroad, housing). To elicit truthful reporting of
legal status, the interviews are anonymous, ask for no sensitive information (such
as addresses), and are carried out in public spaces by foreign-born interviewers
(wherever possible, from the same country as the interviewees) who emphasize the
independence of the ISMU Foundation from any Italian government body. The
information on legal status is obtained by asking the immigrants about the type
of legal documents they have, starting with the most permanent (being an Italian
citizen) and moving down to the option of “no documents”.
The ISMU data are sampled using an intercept point survey methodology based on
the tendency of immigrants to cluster at certain locations (Blangiardo G., 2008)
(McKenzie and Mistiaen, 2009). The first step is to create a list of popular intercept
points (for example, ethnic shops and gatherings, churches, health-care facilities)
and then to randomly select the meeting points and the migrants who visit them for
interview. At each location, interviewees are asked how often they visit any of the
other meeting points, which allows ex post selection probabilities to be computed
into the sample. The Italian government officially recognized the reliability of this
technique in 2005, when it commissioned and financed survey implementation at
the national level, with over 30,000 immigrants interviewed. See Strozza, 2004, for
a survey of the different methodologies used to estimate undocumented migrants in
the Italian context.