Hynie has pointed out that many refugees, after their resettlement, remain in relative poverty (M. Hynie, “The Social Determinants of Refugee Mental Health in the Post-Migration Context: A Critical Review,” in The Canadian Journal of Psychiatry / La Revue Canadienne de Psychiatrie, 2018. 63(5), pp. 297-303). Refugees tend to encounter greater work-related challenges than voluntary immigrants do, chiefly because most jobs require skills that refugees do not often have (A. Van Heelsum, “Aspirations and frustrations: experiences of recent refugees in the Netherlands,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2017 (40)13, pp. 2137-2150). A 2021 study published by ISPI (“Fact Checking: Migrazioni 2021”), confirmed that “80% of economic immigrants find employment within the first five years of arriving in their destination country. By contrast, only 30% of refugees and people who immigrate to join family members will be employed by five years after their arrival in the country.”
The Humanitarian Corridors managed by Caritas Italiana have taken in 75 family units, nearly all of them with minor children. In every case, having children made both forming a relationship with the hosts and initiating a path toward integration easier for the entire family. Nevertheless, hosting families also entailed some challenges compared with hosting individuals.
First, financial and professional independence turned out to be more complex for family units than for individuals. Higher earnings are needed to support a family, and adults have to learn how to balance their time between working and taking care of their children.
It bears noting that nearly all the parents resettled through the program lacked the kinds of skills that could be easily transferred to the job market. Very few of them had a sufficient command of Italian, for example, and since the first months of the project were dedicated to intensive study of the Italian language, they had little time to dedicate to job hunting and training.
Two diocesan Caritas branches made the interesting decision to fund the families resettled with them for five years, instead of one, to give the adults time to gain specific job skills, and the children time to complete their studies.
The job skills problem was an even more serious obstacle for the 34 single-parent families resettled through the program, almost entirely made of of single mothers. For these families, the issue of childcare, and of giving time to a job, turned out to be extremely arduous, and financial independence was precarious not only at the end of the twelve-month program, but even after more years of accompaniment were added on.
Of the 37 people who had become totally financially independent by January 2022, the majority were single adults without children, or men with families who already spoke Italian or English.
There were also a number of cases in which Caritas social workers had to put limits on financial assistance, because the refugees refused any form of work offered to them and showed a troubling preference for total dependency on financial assistance. Others were the opposite and, aware of how hard it is to find work in Italy, were open to accept any available job. As one refugee put it:
"I have no training […] I’m not looking for anything extravagant […] I didn’t finish [high school]. […] Wherever you put me, I have the strength, I have the willpower, I have good health – you can put me anywhere.Many unemployed refugees underwent a period of despair or anxiety. One volunteer described a refugee who, “feels a void from not working. He talks about it constantly.” Another refugee added:
"If the contract [with Caritas] ends before I find a job […] If I have nothing, how can I take care of my kids? I think about it all the time, because I don’t have a job here, I don’t have a house here…"
