Does speaking or writing Italian make differences?

Although researchers acknowledge the key role of language in immigrant integration, empirical analyses on how proficiency in Italian differently shape the social outcomes of immigrants living in Italy are limited. Using the Italian Survey on Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens, we model individual demographic and linguistic patterns, setting apart communication ability from other linguistic skills. Clustering immigrants by mother tongue linguistic group, we leverage the age at arrival and knowledge of Italian during childhood to address endogeneity. Findings reveal how deficiencies in Italian affect integration outcomes of immigrants: the magnitude of effects due to poor proficiency in communication (understanding and speaking) is larger when compared to more formal linguistic skills (reading and writing). Women suffer from higher linguistic barriers in the employment outcomes than men do. Results give empirical argumentations to support immigrant integration through the development of language-training programmes in destination languages tailored on immigrants' demographic and linguistic profiles.