The Italian transition from an emigration to immigration country

Abstract

This working paper contains the Policy oriented executive summary and the National report prepared by the IRPPS-CNR team in the framework of the European research project IDEA (Mediterranean and Eastern European countries as new immigration destinations in the European Union). The main aim of the project is the comparison of migration trends among European receiving countries to improve the understanding of the national migration experience. The report, after a short introduction devoted to the long Italian history of emigration, analyses trends and characteristics of international migration flows in the last decades as well as size and structure of the foreign population living in Italy. Migration and integration policies and the different impacts of foreign immigration are also considered