Migrants in the Italian Labour Market: Gender Differences and Regional Disparities

Foreign immigrants and Italian nationals are not equally represented in the Italian labor market. The aim of this paper is to examine the gender and legal differences of the foreign immigrants in the complex reality of the regional Italian labour markets. Based on the recent and large labor force survey of 2006 (300,000 households), we first provide an overview of the labor market access and behavior of the resident foreign population in Italy. In particular we examine differences in labor market access, activity rates, employment and unemployment rates, occupational status, and professional sector in the four Italian macro-regions (North-West, North-East, Center and South). The analysis shows gender differences in the labor market of foreign immigrants with respect to the the Italian population . In the second part of the paper, we examine the labour force participation of the foreign population by gender, territorial units (Center-North versus South) and different legal status (resident, permit to stay holder and irregular). We use the rich individual level data “SUD” survey of 2005 (a sample of 30,000 foreign immigrants). The survey contains rarely available information on the employment characteristics. This allows us to perform fine micro analyses to study the risk of unemployment, irregular employment, entrerpreneurial activity and self-employment accounting not only for individual socio-demographic characteristics (age, education, country of origin, length of stay in Italy and residence area) but also for gender and legal status.