Immigration and the Underground Economy in New Receiving South European Countries: Manifold Negative Effects, Manifold Deep-rooted Causes

An in-depth study led us to show that the underground economy had a quite crucial role in shaping contemporary migratory movements towards southern European countries. An overwhelming majority of migrants were working in an underground economy, at least for a while, although only a few as ‘ethnic businessmen’, but they did not constitute the cause of this phenomenon which is endogenous. On the contrary, we are going to stress four main negative effects upon migratory flows, and migrants’ insertion caused by a lasting underground economy largely spread in receiving countries. Nevertheless, first, three features of contemporary migration are to be pointed out, because most migrants are different both from the 1960s and 1970s ‘temporary and targeted migrants’, and from refugees who are often overemphasized in the public imagination.