Overqualified, Still Satisfied? Revisiting Job Satisfaction Among Overqualified Migrants

In the context of global population ageing, migrants are increasingly essential to sustaining labour forces across high-income countries. This study investigates the dynamics of overqualification (i.e., when workers have higher qualifications than their job requires) and job satisfaction among migrants, taking Italy – a country with one of the world’s oldest populations and a highly segmented labour market – as a case study. We pursue three main goals: (1) to examine the risk of overqualification by migrant background, (2) to analyse how overqualification relates to job satisfaction by migrant status, and (3) to test whether the relationship between the two differs among older natives and migrants. We pay particular attention to migrants’ age at arrival – a key factor that can profoundly shape labour market experiences through such mechanisms as educational pathways and integration trajectories. The results show that migrants, especially those who arrived in Italy as adults, face a significantly higher risk of overqualification than natives. However, the negative association between overqualification and job satisfaction is weaker among this group, and particularly among older adult migrants. These findings suggest the emergence of an ‘overqualification/job satisfaction paradox’, whereby those most exposed to job mismatch appear less affected by its negative consequences. This may be driven by psychological mechanisms – such as adaptation to lower expectations – as well as by selection processes, whereby migrants with more negative experiences may have already exited the host labour market.