Gerardo Gallo, Wolfgang Seifert, Salvatore Strozza: Immigrants in the German labour market: the case of Italians, Greeks, Former-Yugoslavs and Turks

As an outcome of the migratory started in the mid-50s, Germany today represents the second largest country of immigration in the world (following the United States) and the most important in continental Europe. During the recruitment phase of the 1960s, labour immigration has been very relevant, as the need for support of labour force in Germany was very high. Despite the ban of recruitment in the early 1970s, the flows and the number of foreign residents in Germany have continued to increase even today, although the composition of the foreign communities has undergone significant changes. During the recruitment phase, Italians and Greeks, having the oldest history of establishment, showed a strong migratory dynamic while, starting in the early 1970s up to recent years, Turks and Former-Yugoslavs became, respectively, the first and the second largest foreign community.

However, the article shows that a very strong migration for political reason during recent years (refugees and asylum seekers) has been added to migration for work purposes of the 1960s and the early 1970s, also in the form of family reunification, so that it appears very difficult to interpret the analysis of the economic integration of foreigners in Germany. Anyway, the general indicators of the labour market provide important information on the participation of the main immigrant groups. Turks and Former-Yugoslavs show lower levels of activity rates, while participation rates of Italians and Greeks appear higher than other immigrant groups.

The unemployment rates, which are lower among Italians and Greeks and much higher among Turks and Former-Yugoslavs, record high degrees, above all, with reference to the female foreign labour force.

The article shows that occupational structure of foreigners records significant differences among the foreign workers. For Italians and Greeks, the quota of employees into the service sector is higher than Turks and Former-Yugoslavs. Moreover, the share of women occupied in the services as dependent workers appears very high, while Italian and Greeks males are engaged mostly in self-employed activities especially in the food sector.

Maria Beatriz Rocha-Trindade: Portugal: ongoing changes in immigration and governmental policies

After presenting an overview of the evolution of the foreign migrants intake in Portugal in the last twenty years (1980-2002), the clear transition is shown between a regime of "historic immigration", wherein the main components were nationals of Portuguese-speaking countries, and a new one dominated by large amounts of immigrants coming from Eastern and Central European countries. At present, the main national group is coming from Ukraine, thus becoming the largest population of foreign residents in Portugal.

Immigration policies included several Government attempts to fight illegal immigration, by creating successive opportunities (1993, 1996, 2001) offered to irregular migrants to straighten their legal situation. The next policy step was a thorough revision of the immigration laws and regulations, mostly based on recommendations issued by European authorities and creating the new concept of "permanence permit" (autorização de permanência), that becomes the central instrument for assuring the legal status of foreigners in Portugal.

Under these regulations, about 400.000 foreign nationals (4% of the total Portuguese population) now live in Portugal.

Federica Scarpa: The language of migration studies in English and Italian

This paper is concerned with the language of the interdisciplinary academic field of migration studies in English and Italian from a translator’s perspective. First the imagery embedded in the English standard language and terminology of migration studies is analyzed. These images have often been drawn from the dramatized coverage of migration in politics and in the media. Apart from the very recurrent images related to fluidity, two other domains are identified, that of fear and deceit – related to the perceived ‘difference’ of migrants – and the domain which the Author calls ‘commodification’ of migrants. Then the paper turns to a first contrastive evaluation of the discourse of migration studies in Italian, which seems to conform to textual conventions of greater neutrality and detachment than its English counterpart, probably because of the greater reliance of Italian researchers on legal and administrative sources for their data. Whilst once these sources were used to describe the emigration and the eventual return of Italians, they consist now of the laws aimed at regulating immigration in Italy.

Marco Zupi: Emigrants’ remittances and economic development. An agenda for aid

The continuing growth of international migration is one of the manifold aspects of globalisation, and remittances are one of the most visible impacts of the migration phenomenon for migrant-sending countries. Weakness of data and widespread use of unofficial channels to repatriate migrants’ savings induce official figures, which are published in the recipient countries balance of payments, to grossly underestimate the actual level of remittances. Growing flows of these current transfers may represent one of the main resources to be considered in approaching the issue of international finance for development. This paper analyses the role of remittances, their investment/ spending typologies, income and employment generation, multiplicative effect on local/national production, qualitative improvement in social conditions and productive management. Drawing on a literature review as well as on empirical studies, the author investigates the concrete opportunities of pooling matching funds into a critical mass for truly substantial accomplishments, focusing on the possible impact of a best usage of remittances on local development, through some new fields of experimentation, such as the possible role of micro-finance institutions, home town associations and credit unions, international development co-operation.

Adelina Miranda: Foreign domestic workers and native employers. An asymmetric cultural relation

This paper analyses the domestic work of foreign women through the prism of cultural complexity. The Author argues that, nowadays, the visibility of migrant women depends on structural changes in Western societies and on the increasing interest in reproduction process developed by gender studies. However this phenomenon must be studied through local perspective, in order to allow a better understanding of interactions between micro and macro phenomena. To demonstrate the advantages of this approach, in the first part the paper places the problem of migrant women in Italy in the larger frame of modern mobilities and relates it to past migrations. In the second part, a case-study done in the Vesuvian area (Neaples) is presented. Cultural dynamics between migrants and natives are analysed from the point of view of women from Western European countries who work as full or part-time domestic helpers. The research shows that, to do their job, these women have to acquire a new "domestic habitus". The Neapolitan case demonstrates that, to study recent migrations, the gender dimension must be introduced in order to integrate the various aspects of the migratory project and to measure the influence of economic factors according to the different situations and the relations that mobility has with sedentary life and reproduction sphere.

Francesca Lagomarsino: Child labor and immigration: the case of the Moroccan minors in Genoa

Mass media and public opinion are increasingly drawn to the problem of child labor, a fact that is hidden from public view, but which is present in both developed and developing countries. In Italy the number of foreign children doing manual labor is not negligible: they are young immigrants who arrive unaccompanied, or with some adults, looking for work. The author presents first of all a wider picture regarding child labor and offers a number of juridical and cultural criteria to help define a minor involved in the labor world and distinguishes "child labor", understood as heavy work and related to slave-like exploitation, and "child work", which refers to lighter occupations and is not readily condemned by contemporary society.

In the second part the author introduces the results of research done in Genoa among Moroccan minors involved in peddling, through interviews with privileged witnesses and with the children themselves, in an attempt to reconstruct their life story through their recollections and perceptions. What stands out as more problematic is the immigrant minors’ psychological suffering, which prevents a more positive assimilation in the new social context. Shying away from more traditional interpretations, which place excessive focus on cultural distances, the author prefers to highlight the objective conditions of social uneasiness, the affective and material difficulties, the disappointment from unmet expectations, which cause conflicts on the personal and interpersonal levels.