Historical overview and results of the field surveys on foreign immigrants in Italy

The first survey on foreign immigrants was realised at the end of 1970s by CENSIS in some Italian geographical areas. Some local surveys were realised in the first years of 1980s.The first university research begun in 1983 on the direction of Nora Federici. Between 1984 and 1988 were realised more than 2,000 direct interviews with different technique of sampling and a common core questionnaire. The results were published in some articles and in 7-8 monographic books. In the chapter 6 of the book written by Natale and Strozza (1997) were reported some results of these surveys with specific reference on labour market participation. In the period between the end of 1980s and the beginning of 1990s many local surveys were realised without a probabilistic method of sampling. The most important survey was realised by CENSIS in 1990 on a sampling of 1,525 foreign immigrants of 16 different citizenship. Immigrants were contacted in 5 different geographical areas of Italy. The results were published in the acts of First National Conference of Immigration. In the first years of 1990s Blangiardo adopted in some surveys on immigrants in Milan and other areas of Lombardia a specific sampling technique called “method of centres and gathering place” formalized in the following years.This methodology was applied in the second university research in which 3,139 interviews to immigrants coming from Less Developed Countries (LDCs) and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) were realised with the same structured questionnaire (102 questions of which 32 were obligatory for all research units) in 10 different areas in the period between 1993 and 1994. After 1994 many surveys on foreign immigrants were conducted in specific Italian geographical areas, in some cases on immigrants of specific countries of origin (nationalities). It is necessary to highlight the periodical (annual) cross-section surveys realised in Lombardia with Blangiardo's method of sampling. These surveys were conducted by a multidisciplinary research' group constituted by the ISMU Foundation. An important survey was realised by Institute of Population Research (IRP) of National Council of Research (CNR), within an international project on push and pull factors of international migration, project directed by Eurostat-NIDI. IRP realised a survey on 709 Egyptian and 819 Ghanaian immigrants interviewed in some Italian areas in the first half of 1997. In the period 1997 and 1999 a research of University of Rome “La Sapienza” on «International migrations and capital movements in Europe» was developed by a multidisciplinary group of experts directed by Eugenio Sonnino and Nicola Acocella. Within this general project a sub-project on ‘Labour market integration, earnings and remittances of foreign immigrants in Italy' was realised with a sample survey. Survey was carried out between mid-December 1997 and the end of July 1998 on immigrants coming from some Eastern European countries (Former Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and Romania) and from a North African country (Morocco). Foreign individuals have been interviewed in three Italian regions using a very detailed questionnaire, mainly composed of multiple choice questions. This survey aimed at gathering information on legal and illegal foreigners, as the latter are not usually recorded by official surveys. The sample was obtained from the methodology developed by Blangiardo. In this year ISMU realised a sampling survey in Lombardia on about 8,000 foreign immigrants and Department of Demography of Rome University “La Sapienza” is finishing a survey in Rome on about 1,300 immigrants from Morocco, Peru, Romania and Philippines. More recently has been conducted a national surveys in 40 Italian provinces on 30,000 foreigners (22,000 in the South and 8,000 in the Centre-North) with Blangiardo's methodology.All these surveys and research are analyzed using a common framework to evaluate the progress introduced in the various experiences.