Great expectations? Migration and job-satisfaction of Italian graduates

‘Is it worth it?’ ‘Am I going to be better off?’ All migrants have pondered such questions, and this work addresses them by analysing how spatial mobility influences self-reported job satisfaction. Both theoretical and policy considerations motivate this study. Whilst the dominant approach to migration has primarily targeted its objective economic gains, such as employment opportunities or salary (Hicks, 1932; Sjaastad, 1962), by looking at job-related wellbeing we are able to appreciate its subjective consequences. Furthermore, whilst understanding what makes an employee fullfiled is per se a valuable pursuit, recent evidence has shown that a satisfied workforce is beneficial both at the firm level (e.g., Harter, Schmidt and Haydes, 2002) and at the regional level (e.g. Rodriguez-Pose and Vilalta-Bufi , 2005). As our focus is on the interregional flows of university graduates in Italy, the study is set against the background of the country’s striking sub-national disparities. We explore first whether, for Italy as a whole, there is a relationship between mobility and job satisfaction and, second whether graduates moving from the South to the Centre–North display distinctive features. We do so for six domains of wellbeing: satisfaction with job tasks, economic treatment, autonomy at work, stability and security, career opportunities and use of university knowledge. The chapter is organised as follows. Section 5.2 summarises the literature background on both the links between higher education and job satisfaction and those between migration and job satisfaction. Section 5.3 describes the specificities of the Italian case. Section 5.4 explains the methodology, covering dataset (5.4.1), econometric technique (5.4.2) and model specification (5.4.3). Section 5.5 provides some descriptive statistics, whilst section 5.6 reports and discusses the empirical analysis. Section 5.7 concludes, highlighting some implications for public policy.JRC.J.2-Knowledge for Growt