Two years later: assimilation process of children of immigrants in Italy

The increase of foreign presence in Italy and the co-existence of “old” and “new” immigrants produced a growing presence of second generation and pupils migrated at young ages. Their integration process is multidimensional and interactive and can be particularly complex. After describing the evolution of the young foreign presence in Italy, we analyse some aspects of the insertion process in a sample of 700 youths having at least one foreign parent and enrolled in Secondary Schools. We use data coming from two waves of the ITAGEN2 Panel Survey, that is the first representative research on this topic in Italy. We estimate a crude index to quantify and compare the integration process’s level reached by each student in each wave. Thus we can analyse the “directions” (decreasing, stable, increasing) of such phenomenon during the considered period (two years length). Further multivariate analyses consider their main determinants as well.