Salvatore Favazza – Maria Pia SorvilloIstat - National Institute of Statistics - Italy

MEASURING IMMIGRATION AND FOREIGN POPULATION IN ITALY

New York, 4-7 December 2006

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registries in Italy

The 8,100 Italian municipalities manage 3 population registries: • Vital events

Births, deaths, marriages, divorces • Resident population

Individuals having their usual residence in the territory of the municipality Households

• Italians living abroad

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Resident population register

• Legal base (register law and regulation)• Aiming to enumerate and to identify all residents. • Compulsory for usually resident persons• Only legally present foreigners (with valid residence permit)• Information collected:

Main information about individuals (personal code, name, sex, place and date of birth, name of the parents, citizenship,…)And households (composition, address,…)Changes in individual and household characteristics Changes in address and place of residence

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

From administrative data to statisticsNational statistical office regularly collect data from municipal registers about :•Main characteristics of resident population (age, sex, citizenship,……..)•Demographic flows (births, deaths, migration,…….)

It means to collect data from 8,100

respondents which:• differ in dimension (from 50 to 2,500,000 residents)• differ in level of automation (from paper-only to full EDP)• differ in consciousness of the relevance of statistics (affecting data quality)

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure foreign population stock

Istat has not direct access to registers Aggregated information is asked to each municipality about:• Amount of foreign population and demographic balance: births, deaths, immigration and emigration (internal/abroad), acquisition of citizenship• Distribution by sex and single citizenship, including minors. • Distribution by age and sex of total foreign residents

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure foreign population flows

Statistical information are requested by mean of an annual survey asking each municipality :•Individual information about people registered as a new resident:

Coming from another Italian municipality Coming from abroad

•…and about people cancelled from the register and moving

To another Italian municipalityTo another country

More than 1,500,000 records every year

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure foreign population flows

This survey allows the analysis of migration flows with respect to :•Individual features of migrants (age, sex, citizenship, marital status,….)•Geographical characteristics (long/short range migration)• With an origin/destination approach (both for internal and international migration)

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure foreign population

•Compulsory registration is not always accomplished by foreigners •Residence is a legal concept (effects of regularization laws) •Cancellation process is complex •Administrative procedure takes a long time (loss in timeliness)

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure foreign populationActions to ameliorate this data source:• Tighter link between offices issuing residence permits (police authorities) and population registers (both for registration and deregistration) •Completion of projects aiming to realize full EDP in public administration•Extensive use of automatic data collectionWill result in:•Improvement of timeliness, accuracy and efficiency of data dissemination•Additional information available for analysis of immigration and foreign population

Measuring International Migration: Concepts and Methods, New York, 4-7 December 2006

Population registers to measure immigrationMore data needs to produce statistical information relevant to policy makers:• to record naturalization and acquisition of citizenship of immigrants• to collect information on persons with foreign background (i.e. with immigrant parents)