Polish and Albanian Workers in Italy: Between Legality and Undocumented Status

Abstract

This study concentrates on Albanian and Polish immigrants in Italy. We look at both legal and undocumented workers and examine their efforts to acquire or maintain legal work and residence status in the host country, as well as their overall migratory projects and the ways in which these intersect with Italian immigration policy and the authorities which enforce it. We analyse what we have termed the immigrant ‘survival’ strategies concerning entry, stay, employment and socialisation in the host country. Our analysis is based on the immigrants’ own accounts of their experiences, plans, attitudes and opinions as registered in two sets of loosely structured life-story interviews. Our study confronts these accounts with the findings of previous studies on the micro-level of immigration policy implementation in Italy (Triandafyllidou, 2003), and the overall immigration context in this country.