This policy brief, produced within the framework of the European projects I-CLAIM and PRIME, which analyse the factors that generate dynamics of irregularity and legal precariousness among migrants in Italy, focuses on the entry channels for work (a quota system regulated by the decreto flussi) and on the pathways to regularisation and maintenance of regular status for foreign nationals.

The ethnographic research, conducted by researchers from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (I-CLAIM) and the Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute (PRIME), through interviews with migrant workers, employers, trade unionists, civil society actors and policymakers, yields five key findings.

First, the recruitment of migrant labour largely takes place outside the quota system: both workers and employers, in agriculture as well as in the domestic and care sector, make limited use of this channel, which is regarded as cumbersome, costly and inadequate, while those who do use the quota system are frequently exposed to fraud and fraudulent intermediation.

Second, pathways to regularisation or to maintaining regular status (through ad hoc regularisation campaigns, the quota system for work, but also — and more often — through conversions and renewals) are obstructed by prolonged bureaucratic “limbos”. Delays in the issuance and renewal of residence permits generate a condition of “bureaucratic violence” that undermines access to employment, housing, healthcare and welfare services, keeping people in a state of constant precariousness.
Third, access to housing represents a critical issue: discrimination, high rents and an informal rental market force many migrants into inadequate and/or informal housing arrangements, often lacking essential services and with limited (or no) access to public transport (particularly in agriculture).

Furthermore, legal regularity does not necessarily correspond to decent working and living conditions. Partial or absent contracts, below-standard wages, unsustainable working hours and abuses characterise sectors such as agriculture and domestic work, affecting also those who hold a residence permit, especially when it is temporary and precarious.

Finally, the effects of irregularity or legal precariousness are multidimensional and follow gendered lines: female migrant workers, particularly mothers, bear a more severe impact, as they shoulder the burden of family care work under conditions of extreme precariousness and in the absence of adequate services, with intersections between housing precariousness, labour exploitation and gender-based violence.

The policy brief therefore puts forward four recommendations: (1) reform entry channels for work, making them diversified, continuous, more bureaucratically streamlined and less dependent on a single employer, including the introduction of a job-search entry channel; (2) establish permanent regularisation channels on an individual basis, decoupled from extraordinary regularisation; (3) strengthen the operational capacity of public administrations to reduce procedural delays and fraudulent intermediation; (4) ensure that legal regularity translates into effective rights, through structural interventions on access to housing, welfare services, and with a gender-sensitive and intersectional perspective.