Abstract

This article shows that the transfer to Northern Italy is decisive in the determination of labour outcomes: Southern graduates that decided to move to the North have more employment opportunities than those who remained in the Mezzogiorno. It is clear that mobility is an efficient strategy for addressing scarce occupational opportunities in southern Italy. Mobility opportunities, however, are not equally distributed: graduates with higher social origins are more inclined to move toward northern Italy than people who belong to lower classes. Analysing data of the southern graduate population in 2001 shows the rise of a new aspect of social discrimination for recent graduates in the process of transition to the labour market: the chances of mobility over national territory (needed in order to cope with the difficulties of finding a job) are not homogeneously distributed and depend on initial status, thus modifying strategies and ways that lead the transition towards employment.