[The health of foreign workers: an Italian and international priority.]

About 5 million migrants are resident in Italy. Migrant workers are mainly employed in manual, unqualified jobs that Italians tend not to perform anymore. Compared to Italians, they tend to be more hired by precarious contracts. Migrants present a higher risk of work injuries and occupational illnesses than natives. This excess risk is linked to the concentration of migrants in the most dangerous jobs, greater risk tolerance, language and cultural barriers that reduce the effectiveness of any training actions. With the economic crisis, there has been a further worsening of the conditions of workers. Despite the decline in work injury rates, which follow the trend of the economic cycle, the distance between Italians and migrants has remained largely unaltered. The worst health conditions of migrants are not related to individual intrinsic factors, but to the way the economy exploits the social weakness of the migrant to gain profits. Better surveillance data is needed to improve the description and understanding the mechanisms by which migrants are systematically in worse health and safety conditions and to provide direction to effective public health interventions.