Migration studies analysing firms' recruitment behaviour are quite limited.This article, built around and examining a demand-driven labour migration hypothesis, explores how recruitment decisions by companies can affect international migratory flows. The study focuses on the construction industry, where a foreign (nondomestic, or expatriate) labour force forms a major component. Through a cross-country comparison, we highlight the impact of the characteristics of the sector and of labour market conditions on recruitment decisions impinging on foreign (non-domestic, or expatriate) labour.The article finally suggests a typology of strategies that construction companies may adopt in order to recruit foreign workers, and it analyses those factors that influence the different decisions in each national context. By considering in depth the relationship between recruitment strategies and patterns of international labour mobility, it is then explained why a company's behaviour can either produce immobility or mobility of foreign workers.
The international literature hypothesized a "U-shaped" pattern of immigrants' occupational trajectories from origin to destination countries due to the imperfect transferability of human capital. However, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is available only in single-country studies and for "old," Anglo-Saxon migration countries with deregulated labor markets. This article compares Italy, Spain, and France, providing evidence that the more segmented the labor market, the higher immigrants' occupational downgrade on arrival, independently from skills transferability and other individual characteristics. Paradoxically, the more segmented the labor market, the more important the acquisition of host-country specific human capital for subsequent upward mobility.
The article explores the effects of the economic crisis on the common pattern of immigrants' insertion into the labour market in Italy and Spain, new destination countries for migration flows only since the late 1980s and experiencing a very similar migration phenomenon. The pattern of immigrants' insertion into the labour market in these two countries is distinctive because it combines a relatively poor risk of unemployment with a huge risk of segregation in low-skilled jobs, just the opposite of what occurs in many other Northern and Continental European countries. Differently from other studies looking at ethnic disadvantages and penalties in the labourma rket which often consider immigrants as a whole, in this article the differences among immigrants from Eastern Europe, North Africa and Latin America-the largest pools of immigrants in both countries-are considered. Results show that, in spite of the many similarities and the minor differences between the two countries, the crisis has differentiated the common and distinctive pattern, due to the different employment adjustments which has divergently affected immigrants' labour market outcomes in Italy and Spain.
Previous research on the Italian case has shown that non-Western immigrants are very likely to hold low-qualified jobs and that their occupational mobility chances are rather poor, which suggests low returns to education. In this paper, we investigate whether, and to what extent, immigrants' different areas of origin moderate the returns to educational degrees obtained in the origin country. Data from a survey on the immigrant population (carried out in 2011-2012) are used, and, differently from previous studies, we focus on returns to origin-country education with respect to both the socioeconomic status of the first job found on arrival and the subsequent occupational mobility. The results show that almost all nonWestern immigrants experience remarkably low returns to post-secondary education on their first job. Contrary to other West-European countries, those returns in Italy are only slightly different by area of origin, which suggests that differences in the transferability and quality of skills are scarcely relevant in a strongly segmented labour market. Rather, the modes of labour market insertion-e.g., formal search methods or relying on contacts with natives-have a sizeable impact on the returns. Origin-country post-secondary degrees are also consistently associated with low returns on subsequent mobility, although highly educated immigrants from new EU member states experience higher chances of upward mobility. In line with some recent findings, recognition of educational credentials seems decisive for the very few non-Western immigrants who are able either to access better-qualified jobs on arrival or to improve their occupational status over time.
This article deals with the recruitment and employment of foreign workers in the Italian and Portuguese construction sectors. The two countries show a very similar structure and organisation of the sector. Nevertheless, Italy only 'imports' immigrants for the sector whereas Portugal both imports foreign labour and exports construction workers on the European market. On the basis of a comparative analysis of the occupational structure of foreign workers and of interviews with construction employers in the two countries this article examines such differences and discusses how (also with reference to irregular work and the underground economy) and why the construction sector represents a key sector for the economic insertion and adaptation of immigrants in the Mediterranean area. Skills shortages and labour cost issues are highlighted as factors affecting recruitment of foreigners in a sector characterised by a very high level of deregulation and informality, and in which processes of downsizing on the one hand and externalisation on the other have had as an important outcome the nearly exclusive role of subcontracting in the recruitment of semi-and low-skilled workers. ❖❖❖ SommaireCet article porte sur le recrutement et l'emploi de travailleurs étrangers dans le secteur de la construction en Italie et au Portugal. Les deux pays possèdent une structure et une organisation très similaires du secteur de la construction. Toutefois, l'Italie «importe» seulement des immigrants pour ce secteur tandis que le Portugal importe non seulement de la main-d'oeuvre étrangère mais exporte aussi des travailleurs sur le marché européen de la construction. Sur la base d'une analyse comparative de la structure de l'emploi des travailleurs étrangers et d'interviews d'employeurs de la construction dans les deux pays, cet article examine ces différences et comment (en faisant également référence au travail irrégulier et à l'économie souterraine) et pourquoi le secteur de la construction représente un secteur clé pour l'insertion économique et l'adaptation des travailleurs immigrants dans la zone méditerranéenne. La pénurie de travailleurs qualifiés et les coûts du travail sont mis en évidence comme facteurs influençant le recrutement de travailleurs étrangers dans un secteur caractérisé par un degré très élevé de déréglementation et de pratiques irrégulières, où des processus de nivellement vers le bas, d'une part, et d'externalisation des tâches, d'autre part, ont entraîné, comme principal résultat, le rôle quasiment exclusif de la sous-traitance dans le recrutement de travailleurs moyennement et faiblement qualifiés.
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