Migrants in the Italian Underground Economy* FABIO QUASSOLI Introduction This paper analyses immigrant’s insertion in the Italian labour market from a twofold perspective. On the one hand, it highlights the limits of the most common explanatory models of the relationships between postfordist transformations, migration flows from underdeveloped countries and the emergence of new forms of informal arrangements in western societies (Waldinger et al., 1990; Portes, 1994; Sassen, 1996). On the other hand, it stresses the central role of the institutional framework — i.e. immigration policies and their implementation — in determining the formal and actual constraints which inform immigrant strategies of incorporation into the formal/informal labour markets. As a starting point, I consider the historical importance and the geographical peculiarities of the informal sector in Italian economic development, focusing on the specific relevance of informal arrangements in the Italian — and southern European — model of industrial development. Then I address the overall characteristics of immigrant flows towards Italy and the socio-economic context within which mass migrations have been taking place for the past two decades. I sketch the peculiarities of the Italian case with respect to the main paths by which migrants have been incorporated into different models of industrial and post- industrial societies and attempt to place the Italian case within the international debate on the informal economy. I address both the novelty of the role of mass migration from underdeveloped countries in the current resurgence of informal arrangements, which has been underscored in the international debate, and the informal sector as an element of continuity given the historical characteristics of the economic organization of Mediterranean Europe. In the case of Italy, as in other southern European countries, mass immigration from underdeveloped countries is a relatively recent experience, which started when the typical postfordist transformations of the western economies had already taken place. This fact, in addition to the historical traits of Italian economic organization, needs to be considered if we are to understand the role played by the division between the formal and informal economy in the processes of economic insertion of migrants over the past two decades. The last factor we should consider in analysing migrants’ socio-economic trajectories is the institutional framework, which has mostly been shaped by immigration policies. On this point, I aim to show how the implementation of the institutional framework interacts ß Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1999. Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. * Many of the questions I am going to address in this paper were explored in a previous article (Mingione and Quassoli, 1999). I would like to give special thanks to Asher Colombo for his comments on a previous draft of this paper and to Margarita Gomez-Reino and Enzo Mingione with whom I discussed all the main points.