Access to the Labour Market for Young Migrants - Case of Italy

Job placement is a crucial phase of unaccompanied minor migrants and former unaccompanied minor migrants pathways, and their greatest challenge. There are many factors that affect former unaccompanied minor migrants entry into the job market like their legal status, the availability of adequate professional training; understanding of the language of host country; the opportunities offered by the local job market; and finally, the possibility of having a social network supporting them with job opportunities and language skills. Results of survey, conducted in 2018 by the Partnership on Inclusion of Migrants and Refugees (European Commission 2019), show that two main challenges to enter the labour market refer to support for learning the local language and having their qualifications recognised. In order to facilitate access of young migrants into labour market, the European Migrant Advisory Board (EMAB) therefore recommends that employers lower language requirements for labor market entry and make skills recognition processes more accessible, effective and equitable. e urgent need to enter the job market is a recurring theme of young migrants, who often find it difficult to fully understand the reasons for waiting and the importance of following the educational and training steps indicated by educators and/or guardians. In our contribution we focus on situation in Italy. In June 2019, there were 7,272 unaccompanied minor migrant present in Italy; between years 2014 and 2019, around 60.000 former unaccompanied minors turned 18 (ISMU Foundation 2019). Italy, several special programmes have been put in place to support unaccompanied minors in accessing the labour market. One of such promising practices from Italy is project Pathways for education, employment and integration of young migrants, coordinated by Ministry of Labour and Social policies (2016- 2019). The project is based on the provision of an individual integration plan (which includes tutoring, counselling, career guidance, job orientation and a 5-month internship in a private company), aimed at supporting unaccompanied minors and young migrants to gain self-sufficiency and access to the labour market. the empirical part we will analyse feedbacks from Unaccompanied minor migrants (up to 18 years) and young adult migrants (in transition from minors; 18 - 25 years), focusing mainly on their experiences/challenges and aspirations in accessing the labour market. Basis for analysing the feedbacks are workshops with unaccompanied minor migrants and young migrants, organised in Italy in 2019 and 2020 in frame of project CiSoTRA.