International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Improving Access to Labour market Information for migrants and employers
88
widespread shadow employment, intensive employment of immigrants in the
domestic care sector, and so on), while others are easily generalizable to other
countries and contexts (for example, the extent to which the demand for foreign
workers originating from families differs from that of firms; the variation of
demand by the size of the firm; the poor performance of Public Employment Services
in the placement of workers). Similarly, some of the conclusions and the policy
recommendations are specific to the Italian context while others can be generalized
to a wider context.
1. Introduction
Better access to information for employers (private and public) who are willing to
hire migrant workers – both from abroad and from inside the country – and for
prospective and resident migrants looking for available job opportunities, would
critically improve the speed and quality of the matching process. This would have
important welfare-enhancing implications for employers, workers and for the
economy as a whole (given that better matches lead to higher productivity). In
order to propose appropriate policy interventions in this area for a specific country,
one first needs to understand the precise functioning of its labour market (who are
the main actors? How do they behave? What are their incentives and how can one
influence them?, and so on) and how this interplays with the existing migration
policy.
This report tries to give a comprehensive picture of the matching process between
employers and immigrants in Italy. As will become clearer throughout the report,
there are some aspects which are peculiar and specific to the Italian case and possibly
to other Mediterranean EU Member States (such as a segregation of migrant workers
in low-skilled occupations, a vast presence of undocumented immigrants, widespread
shadow employment, intensive employment of immigrants in the domestic care
sector, and so on), while others are easily generalizable to other countries and
contexts (for example, how different is the demand for foreign workers coming from
families with respect to that of firms? How does that demand vary in relation to the
size of the firm? Why are the Public Employment Services poorly performing in
the placement of workers? and so forth). Similarly, some of the conclusions and the
possible policy interventions are specific to the Italian context while others could be
generalized to a wider context.
The structure of the report is as follows. In Section 1, we summarize recent trends in
the Italian labour market and we briefly discuss the performance of migrant workers.
The legal framework which regulates the access of foreign workers into the Italian
labour market is also explained, and contrasted with the functioning of this system
in the current practice. Section 2 focuses on migrants who are already residing in
Italy and looks at patterns of access to labour market information from both sides
of the employment match: labour demand (2.1) and labour supply (2.2). Recruiting
– and job search – from abroad is discussed in Section 3. Finally, we conclude by
providing some policy recommendations in section 4.