Refugees and asylum seekers in informal and precarious jobs: early labour market insertion from the perspectives of professionals and volunteers

Introduction

The right to work is fundamental to the social and economic insertion of refugees and asylum seekers (RAS) into European societies upon arrival (Federico and Baglioni, 2021; Kaida et al., 2020). Conditions for integration encompass legal rights and active participation in society, while employment, education, health and social connections within and between groups in the community are identified as domains in which achievement matters (Ager and Strang, 2008). Integration programmes thus aim to facilitate access to the labour market through language tuition, vocational training, guidance, access to preventive health, work placements and mentoring. In this way, policymakers intend to combat barriers related to RAS’ [1] early labour market insertion; either these concern individual characteristics (e.g. reasons for migration disconnected from job-seeking, limited knowledge of the host country labour market, lack of local language competences, lack of access to social networks, vulnerable health) or structural elements in the host society (e.g. policies regulating access to asylum, recognition of qualifications and skills, dispersal policies, discrimination and hostility across locations) (Dimitriadis and Ambrosini, 2023a). Such programmes are often implemented through the cooperation of public and private organisations, as well as volunteers (Bešić et al., 2021).

A growing body of literature deals with the complexities of and the reasons for which integration programmes fail to enable people to access the labour market, criticising integration policies for reproducing structural inequalities and entrapping migrants in low-wage jobs in the long run (Kaida et al., 2020; Lumley Sapanski, 2021; Ortlieb et al., 2023). This is because integration programmes often entail lengthy vocational training and apprenticeship schemes, as well as low income for beneficiaries. The success of these programmes is further challenged by administrative procedures and continuous policy changes and complex laws. Yet little is known about the early engagement of RAS in the secondary segment of the labour market, characterised by informal economy and precariousness, as an alternative to integration programmes. Indeed, an increasing number of studies indicate that both refugees and asylum seekers are forced to access informal and precarious labour-intensive jobs in domestic work, transport, logistics, agriculture, construction and the gig economy [2] in order to get by upon arrival (Lintner and Elsen, 2020; Van Doorn et al., 2023).

By analysing the perspectives of civil society actors (CSAs) [3] who, professionally or voluntarily, assist migrants in integrating in Italy, this article explores the early involvement of RAS in informal and precarious jobs compared with their insertion into institutional integration programmes. Precarious employment pertains to work involving atypical employment contracts and undeclared labour, weakened employment security, limited social benefits, low wages and high risks of ill health (Vosko, 2000). Although recognising that refugees face barriers in accessing institutional assistance and asylum seekers are often excluded from it, this study aims to investigate how service providers represent RAS as informal workers and the reasons that RAS find themselves in informal and precarious jobs rather than accessing the available integration programmes in the early period of their stay in the host society. Such reasons remain elusive in the aftermath of the arrival of increasing numbers of people seeking asylum in Europe since 2015.

The investigation of this topic through the perspectives of CSAs reflects their important role in enabling the insertion of RAS into the labour market. Several authors show that CSAs promote and implement integration programmes for RAS (Bešić et al., 2021; Verwiebe et al., 2019; Vitus and Jarlby, 2022), sometimes regardless of their legal status (Dimitriadis and Ambrosini, 2022), or in the absence of national policies. In the latter case, professionals are considered to do “integration work” to favour people's integration and combat irregular employment (Siviş, 2021). Yet, to the best of my knowledge, no studies have yet explored problematisation in the insertion of RAS into informal/precarious jobs from a CSA perspective.

The Italian case is of particular interest for several reasons. Firstly, an unprecedented number of RAS arrived in Italy in the last decade where many of them remain entrapped due to the closure of borders and rigidity in border controls across Europe since 2016. Secondly, the rise of a xenophobic government in 2018 has introduced stricter policies in relation to the possibility that one enjoys international protection (legal status), thus making it harder or impossible to access formal employment in the long run, given the rigid connection between legal migrant status and job contract. These become of greater relevance in the aftermath of the resounding triumph for the far-right Fratelli d’Italia party in the Italian elections and the formation of a right-wing government in 2022. Thirdly, migrant workers have traditionally found employment opportunities in the Italian informal economy, which is particularly high at the European level (Çaro and Danaj, 2023; Dimitriadis, 2023a, 2023b; Quassoli, 1999; Reyneri, 1998). Fourthly, the study of this phenomenon from CSAs' perspectives becomes central as Italy's approach to integration is highly decentralised, in the sense that integration policies are predominantly based on the engagement of civil society actors (Dotsey and Lumley-Sapanski, 2021).

Moving beyond views seeing migrants as exploited workers, this article contributes to the debate on refugees' and asylum seekers' involvement in the informal economy by highlighting that informal work may be an active choice. This may permit people to access an income in order to cover their actual needs, cope with insecurity and further precariousness or, in fewer cases, open up opportunities for the future. In addition, negative perceptions of informal work as an active choice can change when considering insecurity in relation to one's legal status and the introduction of restrictive asylum laws. This article also challenges negative views of informal/precarious work in respect of long-term integration, as it claims that not only can informal jobs enable survival, but, in some cases, they can facilitate future plans in the host society or in a new destination despite the impact of the informal economy and precariousness on people's employment and life.

This article is organised as follows. The next section introduces the main theoretical debate deployed in the study. After this, information is provided in relation to the methods used to collect and analyse the empirical material, as well as the context of inquiry. The research findings are then presented, while the last section includes the main conclusions of this study and offers some reflections on the refugee integration debate.

Theories on workers' involvement in informal jobs and recent case studies on refugees and asylum seekers

A great bulk of studies on migrant labour and labour market integration draws on Piore's (1979) classic work on the allocation of labour. Segmented labour market theory suggests that migrants obtain low-paid, dirty, dangerous and demanding (3D) jobs by having lower expectations than natives in relation to the quality of their employment due to the fact that migrants may initially consider their permanence abroad as temporary. Thus they might see indecent, precarious or informal work purely in instrumental terms, as a means of rapidly gaining higher incomes than those in their country of origin, as a way of acquiring better language skills that can increase the possibility of accessing better jobs or accommodation services, or as something temporary before a better opportunity is presented (Anderson, 2010; Dimitriadis, 2023a, 2023b).

In this article, I see the informal economy as “all income-earning activities that are not regulated by the state in social environments where similar activities are regulated” (Castells and Portes, 1989, p. 12). People's participation in the informal economy has been often explained by adopting two contrasting perspectives (Coletto, 2019). On the one hand, scholars sharing a structuralist view claim that informal work entails forms of waged employment undertaken as a survival practice, mostly by marginalised populations (Castells and Portes, 1989; Slavnic, 2010). On the other hand, the neoliberal thesis maintains that the participation of social actors (mainly artisans and entrepreneurs) in the informal economy is the outcome of a rational choice to evade the restrictions imposed by burdensome states. According to the so-called “exit option” or reinforcement perspective (De Soto, 1989), own-account informal workers exit the formal economy voluntarily in order to save money, time and effort in relation to formal bureaucratic procedures.

Instead of seeing informal work as the result of deprivation or difficulty accessing the formal economy, studies on the micro level highlight that engagement in informal work can be connected to individuals' desire for autonomy and economic flexibility (Coletto and Bisschop, 2017), and can be shaped by communitarian social relations in which individuals are embedded (Williams and Round, 2010), and professional and gender identities (Snyder, 2004). When analysing the migrant population's involvement in the informal economy, several scholars have added that informal work is not only chosen as a means for survival, but it can be supplementary to insufficient income (Boels, 2014; Recchi, 2021). In addition, informal work can be the result of people's inability to meet formal work criteria (e.g. language skills, qualifications), their lack of citizenship rights (either the impossibility of renewing one's stay permit or refusal of an asylum request) (May, 2020), work experience in the receiving society, and direct professional and social networks with native workers (Aydiner and Rider, 2022). It can also be linked to the desire to escape feelings of being exploited (in the case of independent workers), trauma linked to enforced migration, or to meet gender conventions and expectations (e.g. men who do not want to lose the breadwinner status within the household or women who aspire to feel free and affirm their autonomy) (Vianello and Sacchetto, 2016). Family plans and decision-making (e.g. when people engage in transnational work trips to increase income) can also be on the basis of migrants' involvement in the informal economy (Dimitriadis, 2023b; Ramirez and Hondagneu-Sotelo, 2009).

In recent years, some studies have focused on RAS as informal workers without clearly entering the theoretical debate on the informal economy as presented above. Most scholars suggest that RAS’ engagement in informal jobs equates to exploitation. Failure to access the formal labour market or integration programmes forces asylum seekers to get informal jobs in order to secure an income and make ends meet (Lee et al., 2020; May, 2020; Pelek, 2019; Simsek, 2020; Siviş, 2021; Xypolytas, 2018). In contrast, RAS’ opportunities to integrate into the formal labour market become higher when local governments and civil society actors autonomously implement vocational training programmes in the absence of integration policies (Siviş, 2021), or when people initiate informal economic entrepreneurial activities (Simsek, 2020). However, informal entrepreneurship is often considered ineffective in enhancing integration in terms of relations with the state and the locals (Atasü-Topcuoğlu, 2019).

Before moving to the analysis of the empirical material, it is necessary to contextualise this case study and account for the methods that have been used to collect data.

Context of inquiry

The provision of services for the integration of (forced) migrants in Italy can be characterised as decentralised, as the national government defines the minimum standards and key priorities of people's insertion in the society while regional and local institutions promote and implement a series of measures and policies. Services for forced migrants' integration are often provided through third-sector organisations (Scholten et al., 2017). In this context, the goal is to promote inclusion and integration through access to the labour market, basic rights and welfare services (e.g. housing, healthcare), education, language courses and civic participation.

Labour market integration is implemented through job training and placement services offered to RAS with the aim of increasing people's self-sufficiency (Dotsey and Lumley-Sapanski, 2021). Integration programmes consist of short-term internships (for three to six months) with an allowance ranging from 400 to 500 euros per month. Nowadays, this is subsidised by the use of state funds for refugees and holders of international protection status, while asylum seekers and people outside the institutional system of reception are privately funded (Dimitriadis and Ambrosini, 2023b). The former enjoy unlimited access to the labour market, whereas asylum seekers are allowed to work only from the sixtieth day after submission of the application for international protection (Federico and Baglioni, 2021).

Since 2002, the reception and integration of RAS in Italy has been provided within the Protection System for Asylum Seekers and Refugees (SPRAR) network, run on a voluntary basis by municipalities with the possible engagement of third sector organisations (Law n. 189/2002). People have been offered accommodation in single unit apartments or group occupancy facilities and other services aimed at their integration. In dealing with increasing arrivals of people seeking international protection since 2015, and faced with municipalities' reluctance to be involved in the reception of RAS, the Italian government introduced a complementary reception mechanism. Law n. 142/2015 provided the opening of emergency reception centres (CAS) for those who could not be hosted within SPRAR facilities upon arrival. These new structures are managed by various private actors, namely non-governmental organisations (NGOs), hotel owners and other conventional employers, without the engagement of municipalities, and are designed to offer temporary stay. However, CAS became the main reception facilities, hosting between 75 and 80% of asylum seekers in Italy in the period 2014–2018 (Campo et al., 2020). Asylum seekers remain at CAS locations for many months or some years while awaiting a decision on their asylum application. Therefore, CAS reception facilities were initially intended to align the quality of services for RAS’ basic needs and integration with those offered by the SPRAR system (then renamed SAI).

However, RAS’ integration pathways were challenged due to the implementation of new restrictive asylum policies. Law n. 132/2018 (the so-called Salvini or security decree) excluded asylum seekers from ordinary reception facilities, thus making CAS the only structures that can host them until the final judgement is made on their application. In other words, only people with legal status can access the SAI network, where they can stay for six months, or for one year in a limited number of cases. The same amendment also provided a reduction in the daily allowance that covers asylum seekers' needs, from 35 to 20 euros per day, which additionally limited the integration services previously offered in CAS centres, such as Italian language courses, orientation to the labour market, and psychological and medical assistance. Lack of integration services while waiting for the decision on asylum requests implies that economic integration amongst refugees and holders of international protection status can be hard to achieve through a six-month project offered by the SAI network (Dotsey and Lumley-Sapanski, 2021). Moreover, with the new amendment, the possibility of accessing and maintaining the status of humanitarian protection was narrowed only to those facing serious health problems, coming from countries suffering natural disasters, or those who have been abused. People who are not able to prove that they have suffered persecution or come from unstable or non-democratic countries in which they are equally at risk are now excluded. Therefore, the number of refused asylum seekers has increased over the years (Dimitriadis and Ambrosini, 2022), including both newly arrived people unable to access international protection and holders of international protection who failed to renew their status or convert it into a stay permit for work reasons.

Methods

I draw on data collected within the Migration Governance and Asylum Crises (MAGYC) H2020 project focussing on the barriers that RAS face to integrate in the host society and their practices to cope with structural constraints. Empirical material was collected through 45 semi-structured interviews with service providers (Table 1). The important role of civil society in facilitating the settlement and integration of RAS in recent years (Dimitriadis et al., 2021; Glorius and Doomernik, 2020; Kourachanis et al., 2019; Moskovich and Binhas, 2015) led me to explore RAS’ engagement in the informal economy and precariousness through the perspectives of service providers. The sampling was purposive. I initially contacted some representatives of pro-migrant organisations known to be active in providing services to RAS. These people then introduced me to other colleagues or people engaged with migrants. The selection of research participants was based on the heterogeneity of types of CSA and their services towards migrants. However, the sample does not fulfil statistical representativeness criteria. These data were triangulated through eight interviews and informal discussions with RAS, and ethnographic material collected through instances of non-participant observation at a migration service help desk and an informal reception facility.

Research fieldwork was carried out in the region of Lombardy in Northern Italy, which is the locomotive of the Italian economy and where the majority of migrants are concentrated (almost 22% of the migrant population living in Italy reside in Lombardy). In addition, 45.6% of asylum seekers and people under humanitarian protection reside in Northern Italy.

Interviews were conducted from May 2019 to May 2021 and typically lasted between 40 min and two hours. Those conducted before March 2020 took place face to face in public spaces or at the venues of associations, whereas most of those done after the pandemic outbreak were carried out via video communications platforms or telephone. All participants were informed about the scope of the research and gave their consent to participation, audio registration and processing of personal data. The process of data collection and analysis was approved by the ethics committee of my university.

Answers were anonymised, coded and analysed using QDA Miner, which facilitates the thematic analysis of qualitative data. The coding process for the whole research project was both data- and theory-driven (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Overall, 19 themes and 64 subthemes were produced. The analysis in this article concentrates on coding that relates to service providers' perceptions of the involvement of RAS in informal and precarious employment. In particular, empirical evidence derives from the theme called “informal and precarious jobs” and from seven subthemes, namely “motivations”, “agency”, “exploitation”, “contextual factors”, “policies”, “COVID-19 implications”, and “gender”.

In the following lines, I explore how service providers represent RAS’ involvement in informal/precarious work compared with their insertion into available integration programmes in the earlier stages of people's stay.

Findings

Talking about RAS’ insertion into informal and precarious jobs, the great majority of interviewees perceive that such employment indicates deviation from what is considered to be decent work—that is, productive work delivering a fair income, security and better prospects for social integration (International Labour Organisation). Such depictions were seen across any economic sector to which participants referred. This is to say, insertion into odd jobs, street commerce, cleaning services, construction, and the platform economy (e.g. riders in the delivery sector) was linked to poor working conditions and exploitation. However, there were a variety of answers in relation to the motivations in individual cases to exit or reject integration programmes and access informal economy and precarious employment. These are analysed in the following sections.

Conclusions and discussion: RAS’ early insertion in informal/precarious jobs and the meaning in terms of long-term integration and future plans

In this article, I have explored CSAs' perceptions of refugees' and asylum seekers' early involvement in informal and precarious jobs rather than undertaking institutional integration paths. The analysis of data advances the theoretical debate on migrants' engagement in the informal economy on the one hand; on the other, it opens up a discussion on the link between informal/precarious jobs and long-term integration or/and future migration trajectories.

Previous studies on RAS’ engagement in the informal economy mainly represent RAS as exploited workers facing social exclusion due to the precariousness or lack of legal status and the lack of integration policies (Lee et al., 2020; May, 2020; Pelek, 2019; Simsek, 2020; Siviş, 2021). In these studies, people are considered to fail to gain access to job opportunities in the formal realm of the economy as a result of a set of barriers in relation to RAS’ personal characteristics and the institutional and legislative contexts. Instead, the perspectives of professionals and volunteers assisting newly arrived people show that some RAS can opt to access informal and precarious jobs as a way to meet their actual economic needs or to sustain future projects. Although such engagement is often criticised for trapping people due to the irregularity of their legal status and leading to social exclusion, it is argued that the rejection or abandonment of integration programmes can be seen as an active choice. Moreover, representations of informal work amongst RAS may be shaped by the RAS’ legal status. This means that informal work can be considered a valuable solution for asylum seekers, as access to legal status is generally not likely; in this case, participation in integration programmes is considered useless. Perceptions of people's involvement in the informal economy can also change when laws further limit the possibility of accessing a stay and work permit. However, distinctions based on legal status can be blurred when taking into consideration people's desires or future plans (e.g. desire to move to a new destination, access to informal jobs as means to increase incomes). This further complicates the debate on the relationship between motivations for getting informal jobs and migrants' legal status.

In light of the above research results and theoretical contributions, it is possible to reflect on RAS’ early insertion in precarious jobs, their long-term integration and future migration trajectories. According to the view of some participants, integration programmes are the only way to facilitate RAS’ integration in the long run. Insertion in vocational training and investment in language courses are factors that can enable people's successful settlement in the host society. Yet this view is not shared by all interviewees. Instead of seeing labour market insertion programmes as tools for integration, it is suggested that informal and precarious employment may be considered as an option securing survival in the host country and enabling mobility to a new destination. This can be relevant for other countries with restrictive asylum policies and segmented labour markets. In a few cases, as informal work often permits higher incomes than are offered by integration programmes and regularisation of legal status becomes possible through extraordinary amnesties like the one promoted in Italy (Bonizzoni and Hajer, 2023), accumulation of financial capital can open up opportunities for long-term integration. Yet the implications of informal and precarious jobs in workers' lives should not be neglected (Dimitriadis, 2023b; Fouskas, 2018), or the need to reconsider the functioning and efficiency of state integration programmes.

Both the debate on RAS’ motivations for insertion into informal and precarious jobs in the early stage of their stay and that on integration outcomes in the long run would benefit from a thorough investigation of the perspectives of informal and precarious workers themselves and their plans, desires, aspirations, and integration trajectories. Future research should also investigate the relevance of RAS’ subjective meanings associated with their insertion in the informal economy, as highlighted in previous research (e.g. gender conventions, desire for autonomy, social relations), as well as how work experience and different social and demographic characteristics amongst CSAs shape their perceptions of precarious and informal labour amongst migrants.