Migration: and its Economic Implications in Contemporary Italy

Abstract

This thesis examines the extremely complex economic implications of migration in contemporary Italy, arguing that migrant labor is structurally necessary to the Italian economy while migrants themselves are systematically excluded from legal protections, social belonging, and overall recognition. I use my ethnographic fieldwork conducted throughout northern and southern Italy in January 2026, alongside economic and anthropological literature to determine how the contradictions within Italian migration continue today. I anchor this analysis in multiple theoretical frameworks, such as Didier Fassin's concept of the “moral economy”, which describes how states use compassion and humanitarianism to justify repressive and exclusionary practices. I open the thesis with a personal and historical framing of my own family's emigration from San Pietro Infine, after the Battle of San Pietro Infine in December 1943. I use my family's survival and post-war emigration to the United States to display a broader history of displacement, mobility, and return. I hope that this personal lens will help to highlight the moral similarities between Italian emigrants of the mid-twentieth century and migrants from North and sub-Saharan Africa today.