Skilled Foreign Workers in Italy: an Alternative Measurement Method

The issue of high skilled migration is of increasing importance in the policy debates in a diverse set of countries, however, very little is know about the effects and the magnitude of high skill migration also because data on this topic are very scarce. The debate about the effect of immigration in Italy has been exclusively focused on the unskilled immigrants and their effect on the labour market, almost nothing is known about the skilled foreign workers. The phenomenon is not so important as in other countries (i.e. U.S., UK and Germany), however, the share of foreign workers among white collars and managers is constantly increasing in the last years; moreover, it is often declared by employers a shortage of skilled manual workers that can only be satisfied by foreign workers. As the Eurostat Labour Force Survey, one of the few dataset available to study this issue, cannot be used because foreign workers are underrepresented for southern European countries like Italy, we propose here an alternative method based to the salary paid to the worker. We use the distribution of individual wages, after controlling for observable individual and firm characteristics, to measure skill that is defined as unobservable "ability" for which the worker receives a wage premium over the main wage paid to workers with similar observable characteristics. Descriptive statistics on the characteristics of skilled immigrants confirm the shared knowledge that there is a demand for highly specialised manual workers which is satisfied by experienced male workers coming from non European countries. Moreover a simple test is carried out to investigate which are the motivation of mobility inside Europe, and the effect of European integration policy and international trade.Migration, skilled labour.

The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers‟ exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.Migration, Exertion of effort, Contracted Temporary Migration

The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers' exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.migration, exertion of effort, contracted temporary migration

The Impact of Worker Effort on Public Sentiment Towards Temporary Migrants

Temporary and circular migration programs have been devised by many destination countries and supported by the European Commission as a policy to reduce welfare and social costs of immigration in destination countries. In this paper we present an additional reason for proposing temporary migration policies based on the characteristics of the foreign labor-effort supply. The level of effort exerted by migrants, which decreases over their duration in the host country, positively affects production, real wages and capital owners\' profits. We show that the acceptance of job offers by migrants result in the displacement in employment of national workers. However it increases the workers\' exertion, decreases prices and thus can counter anti-immigrant voter sentiment. Therefore, the favorable sentiment of the capital owners and the local population towards migrants may rise when temporary migration policies are adopted.Migration, Exertion of effort, Contracted Temporary Migration

Do Foreigners Replace Native Immigrants? Evidence from a Panel Cointegration Analysis

This paper examines the impact of the immigration of foreigners on domestic labour mobility. Since David Card's seminal study on the regional labour market impact of the Mariel Boatlift it is controversial whether domestic labour mobility equilibrates economic conditions across cities and regions. However, there is little or no evidence that natives leave destinations where migrants tend to cluster. In this paper we reconcile the existing evidence by taking another route. We analyze whether the immigration of foreigners replaces domestic mobility from poor to rich regions. We focus on Italy, which is characterized by market differences in earnings between the North and the South. Based on a panel cointegration approach we exploit the variance of international and internal migration over time for identifying potential displacement effects. The main finding is that, conditional on unemployment and wage differentials, the share of foreign workers in the labour force of the destination regions discourages internal labour mobility significantly. As a consequence, spatial correlation studies which use the variance of the foreigner share across region for identifying the wage and employment effects of immigration, tend to understate the actual immigration impact.international migration, domestic migration, labour markets, panel cointegration, Italy

The social assimilation of immigrants

The aim of this paper on the social assimilation of immigrants is to take a close look at migrants'social integration into the host country. The authors rely on the European Community Household panel (ECHP), which devotes a full module to the role and relevance of social relations for both migrants and natives. An innovative feature of this analysis is that it relies on migrants perceptions about their integration rather than - as is typically the case in most opinion surveys - on natives attitudes toward migrants. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, migrants - particularly from non-EU origins - are at a disadvantage in the fields of social relations. Even after controlling for their individual characteristics, such as age, education, family size, and employment status, they tend to socialize less than natives. Second, migrants tend to converge, albeit quite slowly, to the standard of natives. This finding highlights the risks of short term migration, where migrants tend to be constantly marginalized. Third, education has a significant impact on the type of social activities that individuals undertake. More educated people tend to relate somewhat less with their close neighborhood, but quite intensively with the broader community. The implication for policy makers concerned about the creation of ethnic enclaves is to promote education among immigrants'community.Population Policies,International Migration,Anthropology,Voluntary and Involuntary Resettlement,Human Migrations&Resettlements

Skilled and Unskilled Wage Dynamics in Italy in the ‘90s: Changes in the individual characteristics, institutions, trade and technology.

In this paper we use individual micro data on workers combined with industry and regional data to study the wage dynamics of skilled and unskilled workers in Italy in the period 1991-1998. Being different to previous empirical studies, our data allow us to explore in a unique framework the role of many of the factors indicated in the literature as possible causes of the widening of the wage gap between skilled and unskilled workers: changes in the individual characteristics of workers, changes in the institutions of the labour market, increasing international integration and skill-biased technological progress. Our results show that international integration, both in terms of trade in goods and in terms of international labour mobility, plays a role in determining the wage dynamics of skilled (white collar) and of unskilled (blue collar) workers. In addition, in line with the research in labour economics, our findings show that the individual characteristics of workers, and the institutional variables matter more in explaining skilled and unskilled wage dynamics than differential wage one.Skilled and unskilled wages, individual characteristics, labour market institutions, international trade.

The Social Assimilation of Immigrants

Policy makers in migrant-receving countries must often strike a delicate balance between economic needs, that would dictate a substantial increase in the number of foreign workers, and political and electoral imperatives, that typically result in highly restrictive immigration policies. Promoting integration of migrants into the host country would go a long way in alleviating the trade off between economic and political considerations. While there is a large literature on the economic assimilation of immigrants, somewhat less attention has been devoted to other – and equally crucial – dimensions of migrants’ integration, namely the process of social assimilation. The aim of this paper is to take a close look at migrants social integration into the host country. We rely on the European Community Household panel (ECHP), which devotes a full module to the role and relevance of social relations for both migrants and natives. An innovative feature of this analysis is that it relies on migrants perceptions about their integration rather than – as is typically the case in most opinion surveys – on natives attitudes toward migrants. The main results of the paper can be summarized as follows. First, migrants – particularly from non EU origins - are at a disadvantage in the fields of social relations. Even after controlling for their individual characteristics, such as age, education, family size, and employment status, they tend to socialize less than natives. Second, migrants tend to converge, albeit quite slowly, to the standard of natives. This finding highlight the risks of short term migration, where migrants tend to be constantly marginalized. Third, education has a significant impact on the type of social activities that individuals undertake. More educated people tend to relate somewhat less with their close neighbourhood, but quite intensively with the broader community. The implication for policy makers concerned about the creation of ethnic enclaves is to promote education among immigrants’ community.