TY - JOUR
TI - Free Movement of Workers and Right of Establishment in Light of the Barriers and Challenges of the Italian Labour Market: a Case Study of Highly Skilled Polish Women Professionals
AU - Kowalska, Kamila
TI - Free Movement of Workers and Right of Establishment in Light of the Barriers and Challenges of the Italian Labour Market: a Case Study of Highly Skilled Polish Women Professionals
AB - Labour migration from Poland to Italy initiated in the second half of the 1980s, being characterised by employment in the shadow economy and secondary segment of the labour market. In the following decades, significant changes in the nature of these flows have been registered as a result of the Iron Curtain’s fall, visa requirements abolition, Italian migration policy and finally with Poland’s accession to the EU. The aim of this article is to analyse to what extent the implementation of the free movement of workers and the right of establishment have equalised Poles’ employment opportunities in Italy, preventing their professional discrimination and ‘brain waste’. The research questions posed are the following: 1. have Poles improved their professional situation in Italy since 2004?; 2. what principal barriers and difficulties they faced; 3. and what strategies have they used to bypass the obstacles and build their careers? The discussion part of the paper is based on a case study of two mixed method research projects on highly skilled Polish female workers and women entrepreneurs in Italy. The choice of this target was driven by the predominance of women among Polish immigrants (feminisation) and the assumption that workers with high human capital and qualifications could potentially benefit most from the new adopted regulations. The results obtained lead to the conclusion that the structural and systemic barriers of the Italian labour market together with economic crisis and new emigration directions for Poles after 2004 have caused the myth of the attractiveness of the Italian labour market to collapse.
VL - 2024 (L)
IS - Nr 4 (194)
PY - 2025
SN - 2081-4488
C1 - 2544-4972
SP - 45
EP - 73
DO - 10.4467/25444972SMPP.24.020.20736
UR - https://ejournals.eu/czasopismo/smpp/artykul/free-movement-of-workers-and-right-of-establishment-in-light-of-the-barriers-and-challenges-of-the-italian-labour-market-a-case-study-of-highly-skilled-polish-women-professionals
KW - Polish post-accession migration
KW - free movement of workers
KW - Polish immigration in Italy
KW - female migration
KW - highly skilled workers