A theoretical interpretation of the interaction between formal and illegal institutions in migrant labour recruitment in Italian agriculture

Labour exploitation is widespread in Italian agriculture. Although a substantial body of research has sought to explain these trends, further scientific investigation is still needed to understand how formal and illegal institutions interact. Institutional analysis could provide an original contribution to the study of this issue. This study adopts this perspective and seeks to address the following research question: what kinds of interactions take place among these institutions that may be associated with the emergence of the observed working and exploitative conditions? The manuscript examines migrant labour in Italian agriculture and investigates how migration regulations, migrants’ legal status, labour market dependency, and illegal recruitment practices interact in producing vulnerability and exploitation. In particular, this study contributes to the debate by shedding light on the interaction between formal and illegal institutions and by integrating them into a unified theoretical framework. Following Helmke and Levitsky (2004), this article classifies these illegal institutions and their interactions as competing in nature. The existing literature provides considerable evidence that supports this theoretical framework. However, the study has two main limitations. First, the analysis relies on a non-systematic narrative literature review. A more structured analysis could enrich the interpretation of the phenomenon. Second, the study lacks empirical research specifically designed to test the proposed theory. Future research should therefore focus on this task and further enrich the theoretical interpretation by examining, above all, the impact of institutional interactions on enterprises and agri-food value chains.