Geographical Mobility and Occupational Achievement. A Longitudinal Analysis of South-to-North Internal Migration in Italy

Geographical mobility is a major driving force underlying demographic and social change, but surprisingly fewer studies have focused on how it influences occupational success and the intergenerational reproduction of social inequalities. This work studied the effect of internal mobility on occupational status in Italy, investigating if male and female occupational status benefited from South-to-North migration, and if the migration benefit or disadvantage changed according to the family status and the social class of origin. Empirical analyses are based on the Italian Household Longitudinal Survey by means of a set of fixed effects linear regression panel models combined with the coarsened exact matching (CEM). Results show that only men experience a migration benefit, whereas women experience a migration disadvantage, which increases when they move after the union formation and the transition to parenthood. Finally, the effect of geographical mobility differs according to the social class of origin only for men, since those coming from the upper classes experience a much higher migration benefit than those from the medium and the lower ones. We thus show that geographical mobility is an additional source of advantage for individuals from the upper classes, and its positive effect on male occupational success cumulates with the family-related one, increasing the social distances between individuals located in different social strata.