Gli immigrati: lavoratori mobili (e intrappolati) in un mondo del lavoro in movimento

[Autom. eng. transl.] Immigration is one of the social phenomena that, in recent decades, has attracted the attention of social researchers, especially sociologists (and sociologists!) of economics and work, so much so as to lead to the birth and consolidation of a specific disciplinary branch: the economic sociology of immigration (Portes, 1995), in which studies on the work of immigrants occupy a central place. The developments of economic and work sociology have allowed a better sociological knowledge of immigration, greatly enriching the interpretative framework of the processes of migration and economic integration. At the same time, the study of migration and economic integration processes has enabled economic and labor sociology to make interesting progress from a theoretical point of view: in Mertonian terms (Merton 1987), immigration represents a strategic research site, an area of strategic research in which processes of more general relevance manifest themselves with unprecedented clarity. Beyond the number (which is also considerable) of people who are directly involved, interest in migration derives from its being a “collective action” (Castles, Miller, 2012) closely intertwined with the processes of transformation of the societies of origin and destination: a phenomenon of social life that is in relation with all the others, so as to make possible, through its analysis, the overall reading of the entire society (and of the entire labor market rooted in social dynamics). A peculiarity that Sayad (1996) has summarized in the very effective image of immigration as a mirror of society. It should therefore not be surprising that the study of immigrants' work intercepts all the levels of analysis indicated in the introduction to this volume: - the micro level, which sees immigrants as economic actors called upon to decide whether to go and invest their working capacity elsewhere and then protagonists of strategies of occupational integration and professional mobility; - the meso level, which sees companies as microcosms in which immigrants, due to the specificity of their ethnic, cultural and religious background, test both the inclusive capacity of work organizations and that of managing, even in its inevitably conflictual aspects, the growing heterogeneity of personnel and of encouraging the release of its performative potential; - the macro one, which sees immigrants as particularly involved in the dynamics of transformation of social and production systems and in their repercussions on workers, making them paradigmatic subjects of how social differences and inequalities impact the world of work. Immigrant work therefore presents itself as an immense field of study and capable of suggesting multiple interesting interpretations of a world of work "in motion". But, precisely for this reason, it is impossible to summarize in the space available here. Following the indications of the curators, this chapter focuses on the Italian case and on dependent work, dealing with the characteristics of the population with a migrant background (§ 1), the process of formation of the supply and demand of immigrant work (§ 2), the main characteristics of immigrant participation in the labor market and their critical issues (§ 3), and then concludes with some indications for the future (§ 4).