Main characteristics of the immigration in Italy in 2018

The foreign population in Italy is not expanding and in 2018 has yet grow “physiologically” of just 2.2%, reaching 5,255,500 residents at the end of the year, i.e. the 8.7% of all inhabitants in the country. The annual net growth of 111,000 foreign people is mainly due to 65,400 children born during 2018 from foreign couples already living in Italy, so that these children are not “immigrants”.

New presences of immigrants radically decreased in Italy both because of the persisting closure of regular entry channels for non-EU workers who, coming from aboard, want to settle in the country, and the 2017 agreements between Italy and Lybia, signed with both the two fighting Libyan governments and with the local “clans” who manage migrants’ trafficking and exploitation, in order to stop migrants’ flows on the Mediterranean central route.

In this way, not only migrants disembarked in Italy fall down to only 23,370 during 2018 (-80.4% with respect to the 119,310 disembarked in Italy in 2017, and again hightly decreased to just 6,700 in the first 9 months of 2019); but, if we exclude, from the 242,000 stay permits released for the first time to non-EU immigrants in 2018 (the 52.4% of which regarding family reasons), all those concerning temporary stays (seasonal work, studying etc..), we obtain 203,500 new permits for stable settlement. Most of these released for family reasons, work and protection concern people either born in 2018 (family reasons) or who already lives in the country and formally changed, in 2018, the reason or the typology of their permit of stay, not migrants who effectively entered the country during the year. (Idos, 2019)

Foreigners’ participation to the Italian economy and labour market confirms both the advantage for Italy due to this adjunctive labour force and the immigrant workers’ disadvantage for their job conditions, career opportunities, salary levels and social mobility. At the end of 2018 foreigners, in Italy, are 2,455,000 among all the employed people (10.6% of the total) and 400,000 among the unemployed (14.5%). The 65.9% of foreign employees work in the services, the 27.7% in the industry and the 6,4% in agriculture.

Immigrants’ labour market is still limited to less qualifield jobs and strongly differentiated by nationality and gender: the two thirds of foreign employees are unskilled or manual workers and only 7% are qualified professional workers. Foreign workers reach the hightest percentages in the domestic care jobs, where they represent the 68.9% of all employees and where the 42% of all foreign women workers in Italy are employed.

More than a third of immigrant workers are over-educated (34.4% compared to 23.5% of Italians) and the monthly average wage amount to a little more than 1,000 euro versus almost 1,400 euro of the Italians. (Idos, 2019)