Caring Professions in Super-Diverse Societies: which Role for Students with a Migrant Background?

The increase in life expectancy, multimorbidity and chronic diseases, and the consequent demand for health and social work staff, has long been an important pull factor for immigration in many countries (Bartely et al., 2012). As several studies show, in Italy too, care work has been a favoured entry channel for first-generation immigrants with low qualifications (Colombo e Catanzaro, 2011; Boccagni, 2016). Indeed, the so-called ‘care drain’ phenomenon (Ehrenreich and Hochschild 2003; Bettio et al. 2006) is gradually changing in the direction of both attracting more qualified professionals from abroad (Schilgen et al. 2017) and stimulating domestic supply. In Italy, the Covid-19 pandemic opened a debate on the need to recruit health workers of foreign nationality to cover staff shortages, highlighting the long-standing paradox between the growing demand for qualified migrant care workers and the existing barriers to legal and social recognition (Ranci et al., 2021). The recent crisis also highlights the need for more knowledge about the presence of highly skilled individuals with a migration background in the care sector in order to understand the changes that are reshaping the care sector and our societies as a whole. Against this backdrop, our research focuses on migrants and children of migrants in education and training for care professions. Building on previous research on people with a migrant background in higher education (Bertozzi and Lagomarsino, 2019; Bozzetti, 2021; Heath et al. 2008) or in prestigious professional and social positions (Crul et al., 2017), we explore the motivations that drive and the resources that support the choice of care as an educational and professional field. As part of a multi-method research on students from migrant backgrounds at the Sapienza University of Rome, this paper presents preliminary findings from over 20 qualitative interviews with students en- rolled in first degree programmes in social work and health professions. In line with international trends, our re- search shows that the care sector is increasingly a privileged choice for the children of immigrants in higher education. Besides the opportunities for integration and social mobility that it offers, however, this choice appears to be in continuity with the vocational choices prevalent among second generation students, demonstrating that the persistence of processes of ‘subaltern integration’ (Ambrosini, 2001) remains critical thus requiring further investigation and targeted education policies.