The paper focuses on the characteristics of immigrants coming from Eastern Europe to the Piemonte region (and specifically Torino) and their insertion in the labor market. Economic needs and family reasons are the main causes that push them to leave their home countries. This is why it is impossible to consider this group as an expression of skilled migration: they are highly qualified but they are not looking - in the first instance - for a qualified job. They know, especially women and men at the age of forty to fifty, that they can easily find a job in the domestic and building sectors, and they accept these low-qualified jobs even though they are teachers, engineers, technicians. Previous skills and abilities come out afterwards and sometimes they guarantee a kind of a career: men become entrepreneurs while women become cultural mediators, nurses, and social workers.

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skilled labor Italy Social Work labor market migrant worker Piedmont [Italy] Torino [Piedmont] European immigrant