In Italy, where foreign residents account for more than 9% of the population (Ministry of Labour and Social Policies, 2025), access to language, vocational, and adult education remains highly uneven and strongly shaped by migrants’ legal, social, and economic starting conditions (Save the Children, 2025; ILO 2023a; 2023b). Despite the central role attributed to training and language acquisition in integration policies, recent reforms (Italian Government, 2018; 2023; Ambrosini, 2023) have resulted in fragmented and insufficient provision of Italian language and vocational courses for adult migrants within the circuit of the first and second reception (SKILLS4JUSTICE, 2025; Nicoli & Vittori, forthcoming; Tūtlys et al., forthcoming). Consequently, access to education and training seems to depend less on individual aspirations or prior qualifications and more on legal status, employment obligations, and family responsibilities (De Luca, 2025). Available data indicate that migrants in Italy are three times more likely than Italian citizens to hold jobs that require lower skills than those they acquired in their countries of origin (Eurostat, 2025; Caritas, 2025). While some groups — such as unaccompanied minors or beneficiaries of international protection — are more likely to access basic training through reception systems, adult migrants without protection status face significant structural barriers (UNHCR, 2019). These barriers are particularly evident for those with unstable housing, care responsibilities, and urgent income needs. Against this background, this paper investigates the conditions under which adult migrants access, abandon, or renounce education and training pathways in Italy. Three research questions guide the study:

1. Which structural, legal, and socio-economic factors shape migrants’ access to language and vocational training?
2. How do work obligations, residence requirements, and family responsibilities influence educational trajectories?
3. To what extent does language education function as a tool for integration or as a mechanism of institutional control within the Italian migration ‘regime’?

Theoretically, the paper is situated at the intersection of adult education studies, migration governance, and critical approaches to educational inequalities. It conceptualizes integration as a conditional and selective process shaped by regulatory frameworks and labour market demands. Language education in the country of arrival is analyzed as an ambivalent device that can enable participation while simultaneously reinforcing mechanisms of control and marginalization.

Empirically, the paper draws on data collected within the SKILLS4JUSTICE Horizon Europe project. The research design, established in agreement with the entire working group of the consortium, which involved 10 other countries (EU and non-EU members), envisaged for WP4 (developed in 2024) the collection of data through a mixed-methods approach (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Doyle et al., 2009). In particular, the research objective was to reach the target group of adult migrant workers residing in each of the countries through a survey and semi-structured interviews, aiming to develop data collection tools capable of investigating three main areas: migration patterns, skill formation, Employment, and skill mismatch, as well as social justice. Specifically for this contribution, the emerging insights from semi-structured interviews with adult migrant workers settled in Italy, conducted across different legal statuses, employment sectors, and living situations, will be considered. The data collection tools and materials for obtaining informed consent have been reviewed by the Ethics Committee of the Department of Human Sciences (University of Verona). Globally, 33 interviews were collected between May and December 2025. The sample has been set up using the convenience sampling approach (Etikan et al., 2016), encompassing migrant workers hosted in family homes, VET centers, corporate-based initiatives, inter-governmental skills partnerships, and personal contacts. Interviews lasted 30–45 minutes. Most of them were collected through interviews in Italian, and where this was not possible, we resorted to English and French. At the analytical level, we employed the thematic analysis approach (Clarke & Braun, 2014), which enabled us to identify, analyze, and report on emerging themes and patterns. To do so, we recorded the interviews using Zoom (ver. 6.5.9 for Mac), albeit in person. We chose this app to take advantage of the AI companion plugin, which assisted us during the preliminary verbatim transcription phase. This was manually completed in ad-hoc Word documents using the open-source software VLC (version 3.0.20 for Mac) to listen to recordings. Two researchers conducted the analysis using a hybrid, circular thematic coding approach. A first deductive coding scheme was developed based on the interview outline and the main thematic areas identified in the research design phase, and its effectiveness was tested by analyzing the first 4 interviews. Then it was implemented, adding further emerging themes, such as constraints on language training.

The findings show that access to language and professional training is not primarily determined by motivation or willingness to learn, but rather by a combination of enabling conditions, including secure legal status, stable housing, sufficient available time, and limited care responsibilities. Migrants who lack these conditions are often compelled to prioritize immediate employment to secure residence permits and economic survival. This frequently leads to underqualified and precarious jobs — such as home-based care, cleaning, warehouse work, waitressing, and food delivery — and to the gradual abandonment of educational and professional aspirations. Educational exclusion thus emerges as a structural outcome of migration governance rather than an individual deficit, due to the Italian legal framework, which mandates Italian-language instruction only for unaccompanied minors or those with recognized international protection (Italian Government, 2018; 2023). The burden of working, supporting, and caring for families, together with the difficulty of recognizing prior qualifications, often forces migrant workers to neglect vocational training and advanced language learning. Bureaucratic delays in granting international protection further discourage the acquisition of key competences. Proficiency in the Italian language is an essential skill for job placement in the country's labour market (SKILLS4JUSTICE, 2025). Therefore, the way access to Italian L2 language courses is managed can either facilitate entry into the labour market or keep migrants in a condition of precarity and subjection to labour exploitation, compounded by difficulties in obtaining regular legal status. Besides, reducing the boundaries of compulsory Italian language instruction for foreigners (Italian Government, 2018) – provided by provincial CPIAs, which are not always easily accessible, or by voluntary associations that assist migrants in the integration process – it seems a way to reinforce a system of neocolonial domination over foreign citizens who are unable to emancipate themselves completely and aspire to social advancement.

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