Territorial Integration of Foreigners: Social Sustainability of Host Societies

The foreign population has become a structural trait of Italian society, and its territorial integration a key factor in social sustainability. Mixed couples, an emerging phenomenon in the Italian context, are leading to a change in social space and residential geography of the local environment. Encouraging an improvement in the level of territorial integration of the foreign population, by the host, plays an important role in understanding demographic changes. This chapter proposes a theoretical reflection on the importance of territorial integration of foreigners and an assessment of the dimensional effects it presents to the host societies’ social cohesion, and an empirical application to examine the relationships between foreigner residential integration and mixed couples. Results indicate that the increase in mixed couples leads to a weakening of residential segregation and therefore to greater territorial integration of the foreign population in the host society. Taking level of segregation of other ethnic groups under control, the effect of mixed couples on the level of residential segregation remains negative, while at the same time, the level of residential segregation of a given foreign community is positively correlated with other foreign community’s level of residential segregation. The territorial integration of foreigners is, thus, strongly linked to the local, social environment in context of multi-segregation. From this perspective, the growth of mixed-race couples, at least within a territorial dimension, can represent an agent of change in the social space modifying the majority and minority groups’ residential geography.