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.
Data analysis and interpretation
The two tables below present the total proportion of illegal immigrants who were in both Italy and Spain from the period of 1990's onwards, the numbers are in thousands (000s)
ITALY
1990
1996
1998
Morocco
49.9
Morocco
34.3
Albania
39.0
Tunisia
25.5
Albania
29.7
Romania
24.1
Senegal
17.0
Philippines
21.4
Morocco
23.9
Frm. Yugoslavia
11.3
China
14.4
China
16.8
Philippines
8.7
Peru
12.8
Senegal
10.7
China
8.3
Romania
11.1
Egypt
9.5
Other
97.1
Other
Other
93.2
Total
Total
Total
Source: OECD (2002; 90)
From the table, it is evidently clearly that Italy experienced an average total of 217, 000 immigrants in the period of 1990-1998, this could mean that Italy didn't put in place effective measures to curb the flow of illegal immigrants. The higher figures also indicated that the factors attracting illegal immigrants are still in place and they haven't changed for a while.
The table also shows that Italy attracted more illegal immigrants from notably two countries, which are Morocco and Albania.
SPAIN
1990
1996
2000
Morocco
49.2
Morocco
7.0
Morocco
45.2
Argentina
7.5
Peru
1.9
Ecuador
20.2
Peru
5.7
China
1.4
Columbia
12.5
Dominican Rep
5.5
Argentina
1.3
China
8.8
China
4.2
Poland
1.1
Pakistan
7.3
Poland
3.3
Dominican Rep
0.8
Romania
6.9
Other
34.7
Other
7.8
Other
63.1
Total
Total
21.3
Total
Source: OECD (2002; 90)
From the table, the figures show that in the period of 1990 to 1996 Spain had successfully minimized the flow of illegal immigrants; however these stringent measures didn't help or were ineffective in controlling the flow of illegal immigrants into the country in the period of 1996 to 2000 and in 2000 the country recorded the highest number of illegal immigrants since 1990.
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