Governing labour migration under constraint: employers and skills in Italy

Labour migration to Italy is regulated through the Decreto Flussi, which establishes annual quotas for third-country nationals entering the country for employment. This admission system has proved quantitatively inadequate and poorly suited to the recruitment of workers with specific skills, contributing to employers’ reliance on migrants already present in Italy, often through informal employment. Drawing on interviews with 16 experts, mainly representatives of employers’ organizations in agriculture, construction, crafts and industry, this article identifies growing demand for semi-skilled migrant workers with mechanical and digital competences. It shows how employers’ organizations have responded by developing autonomous recruitment and training initiatives for both asylum seekers already in Italy and prospective workers in selected countries of origin. Under conditions of political constraint, employers shape labour migration governance less through open advocacy than through selective access to decision-makers and the incremental layering of new arrangements onto the existing policy framework.