Foreigners make up 8.4 percent of Italy’s population.

Italy had just over 5 million registered foreign residents at the start of 2021, out of a total population of around 59 million, according to national statistics office Istat.

In terms of the percentage of foreigners within the total population, Italy is almost exactly at the EU average of 8 percent. It’s below Ireland (12.5 percent), Germany (12.2), Spain (10.3) or Sweden (9.1), but slightly above Greece (7.8) or France (7.3).

Italy’s foreign population decreased slightly last year. 

After a rapid increase between 2000 to 2015, Italy’s foreign population has remained fairly stable in recent years, rising only a little each year and even starting to decrease slightly in 2020. 

By the start of 2021 Italy had 4,000 fewer registered foreign residents compared to the year before. The overall decline was made up of several factors as people moved away, died or gained Italian citizenship. 

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At least 174,000 foreigners moved to Italy last year and 46,000 left.

Going by the number of people registering their residence in Italy – which doesn’t necessarily reflect the whole picture – around 174,000 foreign nationals settled here in 2020 while 46,000 cancelled their residency to move abroad. 

Another 84,000 were taken off the records for administrative reasons, which doesn’t always mean that they left.

Some 60,000 babies were born to foreign parents in Italy in 2020.

Last year 9,000 of Italy’s international residents died and 60,000 new ones were born, according to Istat. The figure was down from 63,000 in 2019 and 65,000 in 2018.

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Unlike some other countries, Italy does not automatically recognise people who are born here to foreign parents as citizens. Under current laws, such children have to wait until they are 18 to apply for Italian nationality.

Around 100,000 foreigners were granted Italian citizenship last year.

According to statistics from 2019, the last year for which detailed data is available, the most common way that foreign residents become Italian is either by family descent, by being born and raised in Italy and claiming citizenship at 18, or by parental transmission (a law that automatically transfers citizenship to the children of adults who acquire citizenship, provided they’re under 18 and living with them at the time).

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Most foreigners who get citizenship either take one of these three routes or accumulate enough years of legal residency. A much smaller number become citizens via marriage to an Italian national.

Most of Italy’s foreign residents come from outside the EU.

Roughly 3.6 million of the 5 million foreigners officially living in Italy are cittadini non comunitari, citizens of countries outside the European Union. 

The nationalities that make up the largest slices of Italy’s international population are Romania (1.1 million), Albania (420,000), Morocco (410,000), China (290,000) and Ukraine (230,000). 

Most international residents in Italy are women.

It’s not a huge gender difference, but it is a consistent one: since at least 2007, according to Istat’s records, more than 50 percent of the foreign population in Italy has been female. 

At the start of 2020 the figure was 51.7 percent, which translates to around 170,000 more women and girls than men and boys.

Only one in ten of Italy’s foreign residents have a university degree.

Just 10.3 percent of foreigners in Italy aged 15-64 have a university degree, according to Istat’s figures for 2020, while 34.5 percent have the equivalent of a high school diploma, and 55.3 percent left education after middle school or the equivalent.

Around 60 percent of foreigners in Italy have jobs.

Some 60.6 percent of foreign 20-64-year-olds in Italy were in employment in 2020, a fall of nearly 4 percent compared to 2019. 

The figures suggest that foreign workers were more likely to have lost jobs in the Covid-19 pandemic: the employment rate for Italians fell by just 0.6 percent over the same period, to 62.8 percent. 

Before the pandemic, employment had been slightly higher among foreign residents than Italian citizens: 64.4 percent compared to 63.4 percent in 2019.

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Nearly two-thirds of non-EU residents have a long-term residency permit.

By the start of 2020 just over 61 percent of non-EU citizens in Italy had a permesso di soggiorno di lungo periodo (long-term residence permit), which you can only obtain after living here legally for at least five years and passing an Italian language test.

Italy issued just 177,000 new residency permits in 2019.

That’s over 64,000 fewer than in 2018, a drop of nearly 27 percent.

Most new permits were issued for family reasons (46.7 percent) or work purposes (29.4 percent).

Lombardy is the region with the highest number of foreign residents.

More than 1.1 million foreigners live in Lombardy, Italy’s hub for industry, finance and commerce.

No other part of Italy comes close: Lazio, the region around Rome, is second with 620,000 international residents, followed by Emilia-Romagna with 540,000.

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At the other end of the scale, meanwhile, are the regions with fewest inhabitants of any nationality: Valle D’Aosta, home to just over 8,000 non-Italians, Molise (12,000) and Basilicata (just under 23,000).