Giovanna Fullin

Ethnic penalties in the transition to and from unemployment: A West European perspective

The gap between unemployment rate of immigrants and that of natives varies across West European countries. This article aims at explaining these differences by taking into account economic and institutional characteristics of labour markets and by adopting a dynamic perspective, that is, disentangling the risk of being unemployed into two different risks: that of entering unemployment and that of remaining in long-term unemployment. From the analyses of yearly transitions to/from unemployment, less immigrant penalization results in those countries where the employment protection legislation is stricter, the labour demand is more biased towards low skilled jobs and the welfare state is less generous for the unemployed. Furthermore, the article summarizes the main results of five country studies also focused on labour market transitions of immigrants and natives.

Unemployment trap or high job turnover? Ethnic penalties and labour market transitions in Italy

This article aims at analysing the trajectories of immigrants in the Italian labour market, focusing on yearly transitions from unemployment to employment and vice versa. Regression models show that, controlling for age, educational attainment and region, immigrant workers lose their jobs more often than natives but, once being unemployed they have more probabilities of finding a job than natives. As the probabilities of both transitions can be affected by characteristics of the initial status as well, the two transitions have been analysed separately. For the risk of losing a job, the segregation of immigrants in the secondary labour market seems to be the main reason of their penalization, but also the main reason of their advantage in job seeking, since their unemployment spells are shorter than those of natives, although at the cost of accepting worse working conditions. Analyses are based on the yearly transition matrices of Italian Labour Force Surveys, from 2005 to 2008.

Labour market outcomes of immigrants in a South European country: do race and religion matter?

In the late 1980s and early 1990s Southern European countries rapidly became magnets for a growing number of migrants from dozens of developing and East European countries. The performance of immigrants in the host labour markets strongly differ by country of origin in terms of unemployment risk and access to highly qualified jobs. This article focuses on these differences and highlights whether and to what extent they are linked to diversities in country of origin religion and race. The analysis concerns Italy, a country where the population was highly homogeneous in terms of religion and ‘racial’ characteristics until 25 years ago. The estimates show that religion plays a role in explaining differences in terms of unemployment rate only for women, while the white/non-white divide matters for both sexes. Neither race nor religion have a significant impact in terms of occupational attainment of migrants in the Italian labour market.

The unions for atypical workers in Italy

The use that Italian companies make of non-standard labour varies according to the sector and initially affected northern areas in particular, spreading later to the centre and south of the country. Temporary agency work is mainly used in industry for some manual jobs and to a lesser extent in the service sector for commerce and tourism where labour is needed for brief periods. Labour-only subcontractors, instead, are almost exclusively used in the service sector for widely varying types of work, including market research (interviews, telephone surveys etc.), call centers (where temporary agency workers are also deployed), publishing, door-to-door promotion and sales, journalism, computer technology.

Giovani adulti di fronte alla crisi occupazionale in Italia e Spagna. Immigrati e autoctoni a confronto

L’articolo analizza l’effetto della crisi sulla situazione dei giovani immigrati nel mercato del lavoro italiano e in quello spagnolo a partire dal confronto con i coetanei nativi. Italia e Spagna sono due casi interessanti in quanto rappresentativi del modello Sud Europeo di welfare familista e di nuova immigrazione. Con la crisi, inoltre, in entrambi i paesi, i tassi di disoccupazione giovanili hanno registrato un consistente incremento, piu che altrove. Sulla base dei microdati Istat sulle Forze di Lavoro, originalmente elaborati, le autrici mostrano che - in entrambi i paesi - il profilo socio-demografico dei 25-34enni immigrati evidenzia diverse specificita non solo in confronto ai giovani autoctoni ma anche rispetto agli adulti immigrati. Tuttavia, il diverso impatto occupazionale della crisi - drammatico in Spagna, grave ma piu moderato in Italia - ha conseguenze differenti nei due paesi sia sul rischio di essere disoccupati, sia sulle caratteristiche dell’occupazione svolta.

Walking the tightrope: the imperatives of balancing control and autonomy for young worker groups

Despite the growing number of union initiatives to foster a new generation of activists through the development of youth networks, issues of control and autonomy still remain. This article explores these tensions by drawing on case studies of labor organizations in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The findings suggest that union support for young worker initiatives is crucial for resources and networks, particularly when these groups are newly formed and in need of mentoring and material assistance. Significant local autonomy, however, is also critical to sustain the interest and creative energy of young worker groups.

Gli esiti occupazionali dei laureati in Sociologia

L’articolo analizza i laureati triennali in Sociologia negli anni a cavallo della crisi economica. Si mostrano le difficoltà nel trovare un impiego e il peggioramento per le ultime coorti. Si osserva la diffusione massiccia di posizioni contrattuali instabili e si mostra inoltre che spesso, anche in presenza di un impiego, i laureati continuano a cercare un nuovo lavoro. Trova conferma l’usuale maggior difficoltà del Mezzogiorno, mentre laureate e laureati mostrano performance occupazionali molto simili.