Satisfaction and Structure: A Multivariate Analysis of South Asian Migrant Employment Experiences in Italy

In the last few decades, Italy has emerged as an important destination for South Asian migrants, particularly from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. While these groups contribute heavily to essential sectors such as agriculture, logistics, care work, and construction, they are often found in insecure, informal, and low-protection jobs. But at the same time, many migrants indicated moderate to high levels of job satisfaction even under such adverse circumstances. This study examines multidimensional job satisfaction among South Asian migrants in Italy and examines the effects of structural and demographic characteristics (region, nationality, sex, household size, and year of arrival) on the outcomes of satisfaction of job dimensions. A three-phase quantitative approach was applied: descriptive analysis to identify satisfaction distributions across five aspects of work; Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) and cluster analysis to identify typologies of satisfaction profiles; and multinomial logistic regression to estimate the likelihood of belonging to low, medium, or high satisfaction categories. The results demonstrate the presence of three different latent clusters of satisfaction; namely, high, moderate, and low, and indicate that regional location and nationality are the best predictors of satisfaction in most areas of the job. Such factors as sex and year of arrival had little impact. Comparing the self-evaluation of migrants with their structural positions, the study provides new empirical data on the problem of the migrant satisfaction paradox and draws more attention to the necessity of policies that can mitigate regional labor market inequalities and improve the general quality of job of migrant workers.