Migration in Southern Europe: The Peripheral Incorporation in Crisis

The purpose of this paper is to present the results of a comparative research conducted in Campania (Italy) and Extremadura (Spain) on migratory flows, the processes of social integration, and the policies toward immigrants. In these low-developed regions, the presence of immigrants may be understood through the concept of peripheral incorporation, or subordinate integration, coined by Avallone (2013). This means that, basically, local societies accept economic and social exchanges with immigrants to the extent that the foreign population increases their resilience to economic globalization and the policies of retrenchment in social services and welfare benefits, which in these regions seem already to be narrow and ineffective. The survey, conducted in 2014 mainly through interviews with key informants, highlighted the beginning of a crisis in this kind of social integration of immigrants, as a result of recent changes in migratory flows, in the local labor market, and in the systems of public policy.