Trade unions and immigrants in Italy: How immigrant offices promote inclusion

This article focuses on the provision of services to immigrant workers as a gateway to further inclusion and active participation in union activities. The experiences of the two main national unions in Italy are contextualized within the framework of other similar models, such as community unionism and worker centres. The specific contribution of the article is its analysis of two key issues: first, how service operators promote the active participation of immigrant workers; and second, how the backgrounds and attitudes of the service operators contribute to improving immigrant workers’ access to rights and representation. Certain attitudes and behaviours are particularly effective and may be useful in linking the different union logics and reducing the tensions between them. In particular, immigrant offices foster the passage from social rights and race/ethnicity to a class logic. However, even if some strategies and actions have proved to be successful, Italian unions still have a long way to go before the real inclusion of immigrant workers is achieved