The Internal Migrations of Foreigners
at the Time of Immigration
Foreign immigration is certainly one of the key processes that have changed Italian
society in recent decades. The increase in the number of foreigners living in Italy
has had important effects, among others, also on inter-regional mobility, leading to
a growing interest from the scientific community and official statistics. The present
contribution offers a predominantly statistical analysis of the phenomenon based on
the population register data processed by Istat. The analysis shows that the internal
mobility of foreigners is essentially tied to the volume and characteristics of the flows
from abroad and the ability of destination regions to offer a stable insertion in the
labour and in the housing market. Overall, the migration to Italy and the subsequent
internal migratory moves in Italy illustrate the great ability of foreigners to react
dynamically, flexibly and swiftly to the regional socio-economic situation. This
is an important feature in Italy, a country that for decades has shown an apparent
discrepancy between significant regional socio-economic differences and relative low
levels of interregional mobility.