Italy: Study on practices in the area of regularisation of illegally staying third-country nationals in the Member States of the EU, Ref. JLS/B4/2007/05, Appendix A, Country Studies, Vienna: International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD)

Migrants from developing countries started to enter Italy by the mid-1970s (there were 156,179 legally resident foreigners in 1971). The migratory inflow became important only during the second half of the 1980s, when it was estimated at more than 100,000 people per year. Immigrant population has almost doubled every ten years to date. On 1st January 2007, present foreigners in Italy have been estimated at almost 4 million (Blangiardo, 2008). About one half (46%, that is, more than 1.5 million people) of these foreigners living in Italy are migrants originating from East-European countries. The North-African (19%) and Asian (17%) components are also very numerous, while less relevant is the presence of immigrants from Latin America (10%) and Sub-Saharan Africa (9%). With respect to the countries of origin of immigrants, the data reflects a variegated population, made up of numerous different nationalities, some represented by substantial numbers, other more modest. On January 1, 2007, the first nationality, namely Albanians, accounts for 12.8 of the foreign resident population in Italy, followed closely by Moroccans 11.7% and Romanians 11.6% . These are the only three groups to reach double figures. None of the other national groups reaches 10%, though the fast increasing presence of Ukrainians should be considered as well as that of Chinese, Filipinos and Tunisians (Blangiardo, 2006). (...)