Immigration to Italy

In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population.^[1][2] These figures do not include naturalized foreign-born residents (about 1,620,000 foreigners acquired Italian citizenship from 1999 to 2020, of whom 130,000 did so in 2020^[3]) as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000.^[4]

In 2021, around 6,260,000 people residing in Italy have an immigration background (around the 10.6% of the total Italian population).^[2][5][6]

Starting from the early 1980s, until then a linguistically and culturally homogeneous society, Italy begun to attract substantial flows of foreign immigrants.^[7][8] After the fall of the Berlin Wall and, more recently, the 2004 and 2007 enlargements of the European Union, large waves of migration originated from the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe (especially Romania, Albania, Ukraine, Moldova and Poland). Another source of immigration is neighbouring North Africa (in particular, Morocco, Egypt and Tunisia), with soaring arrivals as a consequence of the Arab Spring. Furthermore, in recent years, growing migration fluxes from Asia-Pacific (notably China,^[9] South Asia, and the Philippines) and Latin America have been recorded.

Since the expansion of the European Union, the most recent wave of migration has been from surrounding European states, particularly Eastern Europe, and increasingly Asia,^[10] replacing North Africa as the major immigration area.^[7]

Romanians made up the largest foreign community in the country (1,077,876; around 10% of them being ethnic Romani people^[11]) followed by Albanians (433,130) and Moroccans (428,940).^[12] The fourth largest, but the fastest growing, community of foreign residents in Italy was represented by the Chinese; as of 2021 there were 330,495 foreigners holding Chinese citizenship.^[13][14] The majority of Chinese living in Italy are from the city of Wenzhou in the province of Zhejiang.^[15] As of 2021, foreign citizens' origins were subdivided as follows: Europe (47,6%), Africa (22.25%), Asia (22.64%), The Americas (7.49%), and Oceania (0.04%).^[16]

The distribution of foreigners is largely uneven in Italy: in 2020, 61.2% of foreign citizens lived in Northern Italy (in particular 36.1% in the Northwest Italy and 25.1% in the Northeast Italy), 24.2% in the Central Italy, 10.8% in the South Italy and 3.9% in the Insular Italy.^[17]

The children born in Italy to foreign mothers were 102,000 in 2012, 99,000 in 2013 and 97,000 in 2014.^[18]