Illegal immigration and the informal sector in Southern Europe

Illegal Immigration in Southern Europe

According to information from the UNHCR, illegal immigrants have been described as persons who enter into a foreign country without the proper documentation or through illegal means. There are various factors that can prompt individuals to take such a drastic step and according to Barkan, (2003) these factors could comprise of wars and asylum, whereby an individual is escaping the war in his or her homeland or due to political motives that could have repercussions such as oppression, bullying and abuse. Other factors include poverty and overpopulation at homeland of the illegal immigrant.

The main objective of this essay is to find out the relation between illegal immigrants and informal sector of Greece, Spain and Italy with a special focus on what factors make the informal sector of these three Southern European countries attractive to illegal immigrants. Two tables will be presented with data showing the number of illegal immigrants in Italy and Spain and the analysis and interpretation of the data will help in building facts of this essay.

How the informal sector in Southern Europe attracts illegal immigrants

The informal sector in any part of the world is made up of blue collar jobs, the employment opportunities in this sector are perceived as low class jobs or rather low paying employment opportunities. Since they are low paying the minimum qualification is also set at a very low level (Borjas, 1994).

Greece, Spain and Italy are economically empowered countries; they have high gross domestic product, high national income level and the income per capita is also high. These economic statistics indicate that the nationals in these three countries are able to afford high standards of living. Consequently the nationals are able to accord their children with good education that makes them suitable and attractive for the formal sector of the economy i.e. white collar jobs.

On the other hand statistics have shown that a high percentage of illegal immigrants, come from countries where the gross domestic product, the national income level and the income per capita are all low. This means that the living standards are a low and the cost of education is mostly high or unbearable to the nationals in such countries, and hence illegal immigrants are usually persons of minimal education level coming from countries where a good percentage has minimal educational background (De La Torre and Miguel, 2009).

Greece, Spain and Italy attract illegal immigrants since the sector is largely ignored by the nationals who for one reason considerer it to be unattractive, secondly it is low paying and thirdly their educational qualification is way above what is required in the informal sector. These reasons largely contribute to the informal sector being unstaffed and usually short of the much needed manpower. However, it is important to note that the informal sector also plays a major role in the economy of these countries.

Consequently, the lack of human capital in the informal sector in these countries means that there are high employment opportunities for those who are willing and ready to work there, but of course with minimal pay and low qualification, consequntly this is how the informal sector attracts illegal immigrants in Greece, Spain and Italy. The other reason why the informal sector in Greece, Spain and Italy attracts illegal immigrants is because of the labor laws that are in place there. The labor laws advocate for minimum wage and better working conditions in the informal sector while when comparing to the country of origin for illegal immigrants this is not so since they work in conditions that are not favorable and the minimum wage is set far below what is been offered in the Sothern Europe Countries. This fact also attracts illegal immigrants to work in the informal sector of Greece, Spain or Italy, which they considerer better opportunity than the one in their country (Venturini, 2004).

From the illegal immigrants' perspective, they will be attracted to the Southern Europeans countries since there is availability of employment opportunities of which there minimum education suits, secondly they will be illegally migrate from their countries of origin to these countries, since their own homelands has abundant equally qualified persons who have already filled up the employment opportunities in the informal sector and hence rendering them unemployed.

Conclusion

The European Union has stepped up measures to prevent illegal immigrants from entering their countries, however the recent financial crisis of 2007 to 2010 greatly contributed to the decline in the number of illegal immigrants since the informal sector in Europe wasn't attractive to the illegal immigrants at all.

Important to note is that illegal immigration also positively contribute to a country's economy in terms of the taxes paid by the illegal immigrants, however much needs to be done to dissuade this kind of immigration as they have been many deaths reported when persons are trying to enter a foreign country illegally.

Reference

Barkan, Elliott R. 2003, "Return of the Nativists? California Public Opinion and Immigration in the 1980s and 1990s" Social Science History, pp 229-283.

Borjas, G.J. 1994 "The economics of immigration," Journal of Economic Literature, pp. 1667 -- 717

De La Torre, Miguel A., 2009, "Trails of Terror: Testimonies on the Current Immigration Debate," Orbis Books, pp 34-56

Venturini, A. 2004, Post-War Migration in Southern Europe. An Economic Approach Cambridge University Press pp 112-123.