The 25th Annual Statistical Yearbook on Migration (Dossier Statistico Immigrazione), produced by Caritas and Fondazione Migrantes, was presented to the public on 5 July 2016 in Rome. The Yearbook offers a detailed picture of the presence of foreigners in Italy, their characteristics and their state of social and economic integration. In the current context of increasing attention around the 'refugee crisis', the Dossier draw attention on 'normal' immigration in Italy. It also details their struggles in achieving successful integration into local communities and the labour market.

General statistics

On 1 January 2015, foreigners (5,014,437) represented 8.2% of Italy's total resident population. This was an increase of 1.9% with respect to 2014. Women slightly outnumbered men, representing 52.7% of the total. A significant share of them are EU citizens. Regarding third country nationals, 30% of them come from Eastern European countries, 20.7% from North Africa, 13.9% from South-East Asia, and 13.4% from East Asia.

Permit types

Looking at the share of non-EU residents holding short-term permits (1,681,169 people, or 42% of the total non-EU population), most of them (52.5%) are in Italy for working purposes. Family reunification represents 34.1%. For the first time, in 2015, residence permits for humanitarian reasons (7% of the total) outnumber those delivered for study purposes. In the integration process, the booming naturalisation rate is a significant trend authors have observed over the past 5 years: 129,887 foreigners have acquired the Italian citizenship in 2014 only, with a 30% increase compared to the previous year. The majority (almost 40%) of naturalised immigrants in 2014 were minors and many of them were born in Italy.

Economic participation

The Dossier shows that between 2009 and 2015, the share of the foreign labour force had increased from 5.9% up to 7.8%. In the same period, the employment of foreign workers increased by 22.3% while a reduction of 5.3% was observed among Italians. However, the number of unemployed foreigners had almost doubled (+92.3%, against +65% among Italians). Over the crisis, the labour market situation of the foreign labour force has undoubtedly worsened: while in the second quarter of 2009, 64% of foreign residents in the 15-64 age range was employed, this share dropped to 58% in 2015.

In addition, 77% of migrant workers are concentrated in low-productivity sectors, especially personal services (29.8%), manufacturing (18.4%), in hotels and restaurants (10.9%) or construction (9.6%). Within these sectors, migrant workers usually end up in low-skilled occupations considerably more often than Italian workers: 36.5%  against 7.9%. Therefore, the wage gap between the 2 groups remains significant (around 30%). As a result, the share of migrant workers classified as working poor is substantially higher than their Italian counterparts: 41.7% against 15%. Within the group of migrant workers, women are particularly at risk of being working poor (59.3% against 25.4% for migrant men).

The Dossier also presents facts and figures about migrant children in Italian schools and immigrants in prisons, as well as territorial data at regional level. Download the report