In the late 1980s and early 1990s Southern European countries rapidly became magnets for a growing number of migrants from dozens of developing and East European countries. The performance of immigrants in the host labour markets strongly differ by country of origin in terms of unemployment risk and access to highly qualified jobs. This article focuses on these differences and highlights whether and to what extent they are linked to diversities in country of origin religion and race. The analysis concerns Italy, a country where the population was highly homogeneous in terms of religion and ‘racial’ characteristics until 25 years ago. The estimates show that religion plays a role in explaining differences in terms of unemployment rate only for women, while the white/non-white divide matters for both sexes. Neither race nor religion have a significant impact in terms of occupational attainment of migrants in the Italian labour market.