This thesis examines labour migration as an outcome of the interaction between the state and the informal economy, by considering the trends of contemporary labour migration from Ukraine to Southern Europe. It contends that in both the sending and receiving countries, migration policies either disregard or severely limit labour migration, while their informal economies facilitate the development of migration. This basic contradiction sustains migration flows over time. The main argument of the thesis is that migration develops within the system of interacting informal economies. I demonstrate the embeddedness of migration in the informal economy by using the case of Ukrainian migration to Italy. / The role of the informal economy in the development of migration is examined across several dimensions. First, I argue that the recent labour migration from Ukraine emerged as a strategy of the informal economy, continuing the previous strategies of cross-border trading and short-term migration to Central Europe. These economic practices were the innovative responses of the population to the decline of the state economy and to the absence of economic reforms. Migration developed in the space between the state and the market economy. / Second, the flows of labour migration were 'invisible' to states, and developed outside state control and regulation. This thesis demonstrates that the migration policies of the Ukrainian state disregarded the process of out-migration of Ukrainian citizens. Similarly, Italian immigration policies did not recognise the existing flows of labour migration. The informal economy of the receiving state resolved the contradiction between the economic demand for migrant workers and restrictive migration policies and enabled access to the receiving economy. / However, access to the receiving labour market through the informal economy contributed to the disadvantaged incorporation of migrants and prevented their integration into the receiving society. The analysis of economic incorporation demonstrates that the informal economy channelled Ukrainian migrants to the secondary labour market with low earnings, a lack of benefits, and no possibility of professional advancement. The mode of access to the receiving economy and the resulting illegality heavily influenced the position of Ukrainian migrants in the labour market. / Finally, the analysis of Ukrainian labour migration to Italy demonstrates that alternative migration-facilitating institutions were developed in the absence of the state recognition of labour migration. These institutions paralleled the institutions of the official labour markets and allowed migrants to implement income-generating projects. In addition, migration was facilitated by the supporting institutions of the receiving society, which counteracted the restrictive immigration laws and political controls on migration. The migration-supporting institutions were predicated on the strategies of circumventing state control which developed from participation in the informal economy of the sending country. Labour migration from the former Soviet Union would not be possible without these informal practices and the culture of avoiding state control in economic activities. / The proposed analysis answers the challenge posed by the recent Ukrainian labour migration to conventional theories on migration, whose approaches usually omit references to the meso-level of migration processes, and consider either the structural-economic or the micro- determinants of migration. This thesis presents the informal economy both as a structural factor which enables migration and as a characteristic of the migrant agency that facilitates it. / By doing that, the thesis also complements the literature on migration to Southern Europe and argues that migrations are not simply encouraged by the informal economies of the receiving countries, but they emerge from, and are facilitated by, the informal economies of the sending countries. To perpetuate migration migrants creatively use the resources of the informal economy in conjunction with strategies of circumventing the state. This argument holds for a number of ex-Soviet countries, which suffered severe economic crises during the disintegration of the state-controlled socialist economies, and consequently produced significant labour migrations to Western Europe.

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