1) The integration of immigrants should be measured by both disadvantage (differences in outcomes between immigrants and natives) and penalty (differences that remain after controlling for personal characteristics). 2) Longitudinal data is needed to properly evaluate integration over time, but such data is lacking in Italy. Cross-sectional data using "years since migration" as a proxy is flawed. 3) Differences in living conditions between families with all immigrants and mixed families were surprisingly small, raising questions about composition effects.

1. Job and opportunities
Income and poverty
Comments by Emilio Reyneri
1

2. The integration between disadvantage
and penalisation
• If by an economic point of view integration means
that people of foreign origin should get job and
income performances equal or at least near to
those of natives
• The measure must be twofold:
- disadvantage: gross difference between indicators
for foreign origin people and those for natives;
- penalty: net difference between indicators for
people holding the same personal characteristics
(in particular: gender, age, education and family
status) 2

3. Implications for research design
• As much as possible, focus on surveys and
administrative data that collect information
both on people of foreign origin and on
natives
• Also because really evaluating the integration
process over time needs longitudinal data (the
same immigrants interviewed every year for a
long period of time), which are not available
for Italy
• We are still waiting for a real Italian Panel
• The recent multipurpose is retrospective and
includes too few people of foreign origin 3

4. Using “years since migration” in cross-
sectional surveys as a proxy for evaluating
the integration process over time can be
misleading
• Such an approach is based on two assumptions:
1. Unobserved characteristics of migrants do not
change over time (“explorers” vs. “followers”)
2. Return migration is not a selective process
involving more either the “winners” or the
“losers”
• Large quantitative studies on returnees are still missing and
became more and more difficult because of the increasing
circular migration
4

5. Some detailed comments on the
presentation
• Main indicators on living conditions of
foreigners
I was a bit surprised by the relatively small
differences between
- families with all foreigners
- families with foreigners and Italians
Does a composition effect matter?
5

6. Individual integration scores
• All the individuals are classified according to
four dimensions
1. employment / non employment
2. job stability
3. income from work
4. over-qualification
• However, I wonder how an immigrant out of
work can be classified according to dimensions
2, 3 and 4
• Maybe, making reference to the previous job
that he/she have lost? 6

7. Individual integration scores
• Stability & job security
- If it is based only on the legal status of job
(fixed term vs. open ended), that dimension
can be misleading as most of immigrants work
either in small firms or in households, which
can fire them very easily
• Over-qualification
- I am a bit surprised by the low percentage of
immigrants holding a severely inadequate job.
7

8. Second generation immigrants
Comments by Emilio Reyneri
8

9. A critical issue for the future
• Towards a mixed society to reproduce the Italian
fabric
• The focus on second generations
- Actually regarding their entry in the Italian
educational system
- Tomorrow regarding
their entry in the Italian labour market
and
the connection between educational attainment
and labour market performances
The risk of two-tier society starts at school
9

10. A careful attention by the educational system
• The presentation shows that:
• Detailed data are collected
- by school administration
- by surveys (Invalsi, Pisa)
• This points out that, as usual, the Italian
educational system welcomed people of
foreign origin much better than other
Italian administrative, economic or social
systems
10

11. An interesting remark
• The presentation has shown that:
• Controlling for some variables, foreign
students in secondary education
perform in mathematics better than
their Italian counterparts.
• Can we expect that futures generations
in Italy would perform better in technical
and scientific working careers ?
11