Italy keen to stop irregular migration but interest in migrant labour remains

The Italian government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, is seeking European solutions to stop irregular migratory flows while at the same time issuing a far-reaching decree to bring in migrants to fill gaps in the labour market without providing for investment in training.

Meloni’s government is looking to migrants, such as doctors from Cuba, nurses from India and farmers from Kyrgyzstan, to fill the gaps in several labour market sectors that offer better – albeit low – wages and need workers, including skilled ones. Those who are already in Italy are not included in the government’s plans, which reject non-refugees.

“There is plenty of room, and even the Meloni government recognises this, despite expectations given the aversion of centre-right parties to immigration”, Matteo Villa, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for International Policy Studies (ISPI), explains to Euractiv.

As a large proportion of incoming migrants are unskilled, the key issue is training, which is not provided by the government. It has instead decided to give companies carte blanche, although the latter can only ask for workers, not choose from the pool of migrants already in Italy.

“The domestic market is left free to act and train newcomers but in an anarchic way. The Meloni government, like all the others that have come before, do not invest in the training and integration of migrants who have arrived irregularly”, Villa explains.

In July, the government passed a decree on migration flows, allowing the entry of 82,705 regular non-EU migrants and 44,000 seasonal workers, to prevent “human trafficking” and the exploitation of irregular migrants, reducing the gap between entry flows and labour market needs, and better integrating foreign workers into local communities.

“The sectors where there is the greatest need for workers are agriculture, tourism and healthcare, including the homecare sector. However, irregular migrants, who are often male and young in their 20s and 30s, and also accumulating trauma in their path, are less easy to integrate both into the labour market and communities”, Villa clarifies.

According to an ISPI study based on ISTAT and ISMU data, almost one million people have arrived in Italy in the last decade, but the foreign population in Italy has remained stable because most migrants go to other countries, where they often reunite with family and find work more easily.

Earlier this year, Agriculture Minister Francesco Lollobrigida (Fratelli d’Italia/ECR) announced that there would be 300 to 500,000 jobs available in Italy and that the government would initiate legal immigration. Immigration channels should be opened in a “selective” way by initiating professional, but also cultural, values and language training in the countries of origin in order to facilitate integration in Italy, the minister also said.

“I think it is unacceptable to bring people into a society and then disregard what they do. Immigration is a physiological phenomenon, but to give equal dignity, integration must be fostered. That is why it is necessary to provide training (…) of a general nature on what our model of life is”, Lollobrigida added.

“There is a demand for labour that we can’t fill in the domestic market (…) We shall analyse what we can’t fill with our domestic supply and then choose to bring in the labour force that comes from outside on a regular basis”, the minister clarified.

While the government has made efforts to conclude bilateral agreements with countries such as Tunisia, from which most irregular migrants arrive, to ensure safe arrival and repatriation where necessary, migration flows are one-way and uncontrolled.

“This government is in a corner. It cannot say it wants to regularise migrants because we have the highest number of landings since 2016, and the electorate would be displeased. In the short term, it guarantees room and board to undocumented migrants but wastes the opportunity to invest in these people to have useful human capital for the domestic market in the near future”, Villa concludes.

(Federica Pascale | EURACTIV.it)