Non-EU migrants and social inclusion: From the 'perceptive distortion' to the tools to tackle the issue

The contribution is aimed at investigating the possible relationship between quality of employment of non-EU migrants and their social inclusion. First, the author demonstrates the link existing between social inclusion and indicators about quality of employment, via the Zaragoza Indicators introduced by the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council in June 2010. After having individuated (i) the rate of people employed in low earning sectors; (ii) the migrants pay gap and (iii) the rate of workers in temporary employment as quality of employment factors more influencing social inclusion, the analysis moves towards an in-depth study of these three indicators in the 12 EU Member States with the higher absolute number of non-EU migrants in their territory in 2020. In this context, a comparison is carried out between the condition of non-EU migrants, EU internal migrants and citizens of the reporting EU countries, through statistical data mainly provided by Eurostat and ILO. The result of this study emphasizes an overall worse condition of non-EU migrants, which are working in lower earning sectors than EU internal migrants and citizens of the reporting EU countries. Besides that, non-EU migrants have also lower wages and are more precarious. Given the link previously established, a lower quality of employment of non-EU migrants is an element hindering also the effective social inclusion of these people. As a further analysis, the author compares the national results about quality of employment of non-EU migrants with data about countries where there is an over-perception of the migratory phenomenon (the so-called 'perception distortion'), highlighting the close correspondence between the two trends. The last section of the contribution, thus, is aimed at presenting three possible juridical benchmarks to improve the social inclusion of non-EU migrants: i) the Italian criminal legislation against exploitation of workers in state of need; ii) the US 'alt-labour' organizations as a bottom-up model to involve migrant workers in collective actions and to increase the support of the public opinion for their cause; iii) an adjustment of the pay transparency measures adopted in the UK to improve gender equality, integrating them also with indicators about migrants condition in the labour market.