Italy

Migration of African Talents through Capacity building and Hiring (MATCH) is a 39‑month initiative funded by the European Union (EU) aimed at providing skilled talents to European private sector companies whose needs for qualified staff could not be satisfied by the offer available on the EU labour market. 

By joining MATCH, companies from Belgium, Italy, The Netherlands and Luxembourg were supported with the sourcing and pre-selection of African talents from Senegal and Nigeria, two countries offering a surplus of qualified professionals.

Since 2010, the municipality of Milan has run an innovative employment service, the Centre for Job Orientation and Placement (CELAV), which focuses on empowering residents, including migrants and asylum seekers, to be autonomous and overcome obstacles to labour market participation. Services include increasing beneficiaries’ employability through workshops, CV writing, job placement, facilitation, traineeships for skills development with supporting municipal grants to beneficiaries.

MeNTOR (Mediterranean Network for Training Orientation to Regular Migration) is a project that promotes legal migration paths through co-development cooperation projects. In its first phase (2017-2018), MenTOR aimed to improve temporary and circular migration schemes for young people between Italy, Morocco and Tunisia.

In Italy, the System for the Protection of Refugees and Unaccompanied Minors (SIPROMI) is a publicly funded network of local authorities and NGOs, which accommodates unaccompanied children and provides them access to the Italian social protection system, including legal support, legal guardianship, access to health, including psychological counselling, access to Italian language classes and to mainstream education programmes. In some contexts, opportunities for vocational training and job opportunities through partnerships with social cooperatives and the private sector.

The Italian government decided to relaunch the Decree-Law No. 34/2020, creating two separate pathways to regularize irregular migrant workers that lost their jobs in essential sectors, as a way to respond to labour shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The City of Milan adopted a two-pronged approach to tackle the needs of their residents resulting from the health, economic, and social impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. They worked to ensure equal access to services for all, including migrants and refugees, while also providing complementary services to address the needs of particular communities.

The city of Milan partnered with a non-profit agency, EMERGENCY to provide COVID-19 health monitoring in shelters for homeless people and unaccompanied migrant youth. 

The Municipality of Lampedusa and Linosa in Italy provided Quarantine Ships for the migrants arriving in Lampedusa during the pandemic and activated a COVID-19 area in the reception center to ensure access to testing and health services to migrants upon arrival.

The aim of the MigrantVoicesHeard project is to promote refugee and migrant participation in the design and implementation of integration and related policies at the local, regional, and national levels in seven EU countries: Austria, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, and Romania.

More specifically, the project aims to:

DIASDEV is a joint project initiated by the French Development Agency and the Caisse des Dépôts from France, Italy, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia and carried out in partnership with public-sector financial institutions in 2021. 

DIASDEV aims to increase diasporas’ capacity to mobilize their savings for investing in their countries of origin. To achieve this goal, the project is structured around two pillars: 

i) Facilitation fund for diasporas’ investments, offering funding for technical and financial assistance to financial operators, banks, post offices 

Through a project called “First Steps in Milan”, the city commits to enhance and accelerate the inclusion of newly arrived migrant and refugee children aged 0 to 6 and their families by providing early socio-educational interventions.

The project addresses challenges faced by migrant and refugee minors and their caregivers waiting to access municipal services or national refugee reception services, as delays in their integration in the school system can generate psychological, relational and identity discomfort.