Underground work, immigrants and networks: preliminary findings from Italy.

• Author: Trinci, Simone
• Position: Report

Abstract

This article exposes and tries to explain some preliminary findings from a research project, still in progress, on immigrant insertion into the underground economy in the agricultural, building and, family care service sectors in Tuscany. Employing a network analysis approach it seeks to explain how immigrants, both documented and undocumented get their jobs for Italian employers and the role that ethnic and non-ethnic networks play in providing information on vacancies, guarantees to employers and activating mechanisms of social control and sanctions against a worker. The finding is that although networks play an important role in providing information on vacancies. such networks play a less important role in providing guarantees for employers and as mechanisms for social control. This is explained in terms of both the characteristic of immigrant groups and their networks and the Italian underground economy more generally.

Introduction

In the international literature there are many different terms used to denote the underground economy and informal employment (Pontes and Sassen-Kobb, 1987; Portes, Castells and Benton, 1991; Portes, 1994; Williams and Windebank, 1998; Mateman and Renoy, 2001; OECD, 2004). So a preliminary definition is necessary in order to understand exactly the use I will make of various terms.

In this paper, the terms underground or black or irregular economy will be used as synonymous terms and denote "the paid production and sale of good and services that are unregistered by, or hidden from, the state for tax, social security and/or labour law purposes but which are legal in other respect" (Williams and Windebank, 1998: p.1). Informal employment, or black work, or unregistered or undeclared or irregular work, meanwhile, will be used as synonymous terms to denote a "relationship where one's labour is recompensed by a wage or fee, in other words, paid" (Williams and Windebank, 1998: p.3), but when the whole relationship is not regular, for example when there is not any labor contract. Finally, I use the term gray work or gray employment to denote a situation where only a part of the relationship is not regular according to laws; for example when extra payment for overtime is made without registration or when there is use of atypical labor contracts contrary to laws.

In this paper, moreover, I take care to distinguish between migration and about immigrants' status in work and in host countries. Here, 'irregular' refers to immigrants regularly in the national territory but with an irregular job or a gray job; 'undocumented' (not authorized) refers to those regularly entered in the national territory but with an expired permit to stay; and 'clandestine' refers to those who have entered into the national territory completely without any authorization.

The research reported here is focused on irregulars employed by Italian employers in the region of Tuscany. It is based on in-depth semi-structured interviews with a range of respondents and employs a network analysis approach in order to understand the relationships between immigrants, networks and the underground economy.

The underground economy in Italy and Tuscany

The underground economy is a largely extensive and deeply rooted phenomenon in the Italian productive context. By means of a review of the international research that considers the siu of the underground economy, it is possible to identify three groups of countries in Europe: those with a low rate on GNP of submerged activity (such as Austria, Ireland. Great Britain, Scandinavian counties), those with a middle rate (such as Germany, Belgium, France) and those with a very high rate (over 15% as in many Southern European countries). Among this latter group, Italy is the country, after Greece, with the largest underground economy.

Informal employment in Italy increased during the late 1990s and for the first years of the new century (Roma, 2001), even if the incidence of workers without any labor contract seemed to be lower and the incidence of people having a double job (the first one regular the second on irregular) higher. The incidence of foreign workers in the underground economy, meanwhile, seems to have increased. The sectors presenting higher rates of black work are agriculture, the service sector, especially family care services, restoration in manual jobs, cleaning services and the construction sector. On the contrary the industrial sector is where gray work prevails. It must be pointed out that along Italian peninsula very different situations exist however. Irregular jobs are more than 20% in the South (with areas reaching 40%), about 15% in the Center and about 10% in the North (Meldolesi, 1998; Lucifora, 2003).

Tuscany, a region of central Italy, has a situation like other neighboring areas and gray work prevails (Regione Toscana, 2001). According to the Social Security Institute (INPS) inspections' data, in 2002, the rate of irregular enterprises among the inspected ones was 62% and among these ones "only" 25% were completely black (Unioncamene Toscana, 2003). Irregularity, meanwhile, is concentrated in the above mentioned sectors, where also at national level, informal employment is more widespread. The worker typology of those involved in these jobs are that they have a regular formal job and an irregular second occupation or weaker categories with more problems of inclusion in the labor market such as youth, women, and immigrants.

Immigration in Italy and Tuscany

For many years a country of migrants, Italy has had an increasing number of immigrants inside its borders since the 1970s, during the conversion of the industrial economy into a post-industrial or post-Fordist economy and the concomitant increasing relevance of informal employment and underground economy.

At the beginning the places of origin were North African countries and the Catholic Latin American countries or Philippines (especially women recruited by religious associations or Catholic church to care for elderly or children in families), but since the 1990s, the presence of people coming form Eastern Europe and continental Asia has increased and now is the largest part.

At the start of 2004 the number of foreigners in Italy was about 2,194,000 (Caritas, 2004), about 3.8% of the overall population. The biggest communities are Rumanian (10.9% of all foreigners), Albanian (10.6%) and Moroccan (10.4%) immigrants. Less represented but nevertheless numerous are people from the Ukraine, China, Philippines and Poland (5.1%; 4.6%; 3.4%; 3% respectively). Most of the resident foreigners have a permit to stay for work reasons (about 2 out of 3); also family reunion permits (25%) have increased very much during the few last years, displaying the degree to which immigration has increased in Italy during recent years (Pugliese, 2002).

In the very segmented Italian labor market, immigrants are complementary and not substitutive or competitive with local workers (Gavosto, Ventuini and Villosio, 1999; Venturini, 1999; Reyneri, 2002). They fill "dirty, dangerous and damaging" jobs (Abella, Park and Bohing, 1995) where labor power shortage is evident. So, it is easy to find a foreign worker in the worst parts of the agricultural sector, in the building construction industry working as laborers, in the family care services when living together is necessary or in the manufacturing industries working as unskilled workers. The smallest enterprises (up to 10 employees or slightly more) are the ones more often hiring immigrant workers (Caritas, 2004).

So, the contexts where foreigners move and work, regularly or irregularly, are the same as where irregular employment is widespread among Italians. Again according to Social Security Institute data of inspections, for the year 2003, foreign workers with a total irregular job have been about 14,250 with a proportion three times bigger than the incidence of foreign workers on the total labor forces (ibidem).

For several years Italian Governments had not enacted any policies or any special law about migration and obviously this lack of rules has influenced and contributed to widespread immigrant's involvement in irregular employments. Most of them had been living a long period of their migratory experience in conditions of irregularity or clandestinity (Pugliese, 2002). This does not mean that the presence of undocumented immigrants is the main reason for the diffusion of the underground economy; on the contrary studies on relationships between immigration and black economy, stress that the many immigrants choose Italy just because it is a country where it is easy to live and to earn even without documents, preferring it to more affluent nations for this reason (Reyneri, 2001a; 2003). The underground economy has to be considered the cause and not the effect of unauthorized immigration (ibidem; Sciortino, 1997). Many people can attain their aims entering Italy with a regular tourist permit and staying beyond the deadline of the permit (overstayer) earning their living by holding only black jobs. Instead of being a borders control problem this is a clear indicator of the serious lack of inspections on labor market workplaces. About this it will be sufficient to remember that the ratio of work inspectors/workers is 1/7 in comparison with the European average (Reyneri, 2002). A great many of the overstayers began to work irregularly then, thanks to the frequent regularization measures (sanatoria), they regularized both their work and their presence in Italy (Reyneri, 1998; Carfagna, 2002; Barbagli, Colombo and Sciortino, 2004; Pugliese, 2002).

The pattern of immigration policy today presents some analogy with the German one in particular because the non-communitarian foreigner needs a labor contract to get the permit to stay and in any case, a very important fact in order to understand the behavior of an immigrant in the submerged labor market, he has to renew it...