The class attainment and the career mobility of southern italians in northern Italy and in west Germany. A comparison between internal and international migrants

The paper reports empirical analyses based on the Longitudinal Survey on Italian Households (ILHS) and the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP). The results show that the inclusion of Southern migrants, both internal and international, took place at lower levels of the class structure. The greater rigidity and the strong emphasis on vocational training of the German labour market pushed Southern migrants into the unskilled urban working class. In Northern Italy, by contrast, the possibility of entering the public sector facilitated their inclusion in the middle classes. Despite those differences, in both destinations, Southern migrants had fewer opportunities of upward social mobility than the native population.