Migrations and social inequalities in the Italian labour market

This article introduces the special issue of Sociologia del lavoro on Labour migrations, inequalities and regulation from the Great Recession to the pandemic crisis. After explaining the role that Italy and Italian scholars have played in recent decades in the development of literature on labour migrations, the authors explore the reasons justifying a special issue dedicated to this topic, focusing on the Italian case. In particular, three reasons are highlighted: the growing availability of datasets for the study of international migrations; the triple crisis (economic, migratory and pandemic) involving Europe in the last fifteen years; the full achievement of a mature phase of the migratory phenomenon by Italy. These are conditions offering the opportunity to address unexplored topics and explore open questions, with particular reference to the growing ethnic stratification of Italian society, on the one hand, and to the role that the crises have had in modifying the consolidated structures, on the other.