Demographic changes, research questions and data needs: issues about migrations

After a synthetic introductory analysis on the trends of legal and resident population in Italy according to different sources, such as census, post-census estimations and Municipal Population Registers, the paper aims at focusing on the migratory component of population dynamics. In particular, it underlines the recent changes occurred to foreign immigration (for example, the importance of family reunifications and the growth of asylum seekers) to foreign-origin presence (from first to second generation, and from foreigners to new Italians), as well as to Italian emigration. This background framework will outline new information and research needs to which Italian public statistics system could or should handle considering the gained experience in other European countries (from cross-sectional to longitudinal surveys).