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Childcare is a need that inevitably emerges once migrants establish themselves and their families in their destination country. However, migrants' use of informal childcare still constitutes an under-researched phenomenon. Using data from the ‘Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens’ survey (2011–2012) for Italy and the ‘Trajectoires et Origines’ survey (2008–2009) for France, this paper examines differences between migrants living in the two countries in terms of their use of informal childcare and, more specifically, their informal childcare arrangements. We employ a comparative analysis because we hypothesised that parental choices would depend on the migrants' region of origin, the institutional context of their destination country and the interplay between these two elements. The results suggest that migrants' choices stem from a complex relationship between the norms and beliefs of the country of origin and those in the destination country, which are generally characterised by different family policies and levels of childcare availability. We show that the use of informal childcare is higher among migrants in Italy than it is among those in France, even among migrants from the same region of origin. The results also suggest that the use of particular informal childcare arrangements varies by region of origin regardless of destination country, supporting the hypothesis that migrants' cultural values and beliefs play a critical role in determining childcare arrangements. Finally, we demonstrate that household composition and parents' occupational status strongly influence migrants' childcare choices.

This research studies the residential mobility of Italians and foreigners in Rome from 2002 to 2019. We examine the differences in residential mobility patterns for (1) Italians and foreigners, (2) foreign migrants by selected country of origin, and (3) the effect of intra-urban mobility on residential segregation. Log-linear models and segregation indexes are used to analyze unpublished microdata on residential mobility by neighbourhood from the population register of Rome. Results show that foreigners are more mobile than Italians and more prone to move outside the area where they live, but with an increasing process of remaining in their current locations over time. Also, similarities and differences emerge by country of origin. Finally, we find residential mobility has increased the spatial concentration and clustering of foreigners in Rome, whilst reducing the dissimilarity from Italians at the same time.

Until the economic crisis of 2008, the principal Italian metropolitan areas of the Centre-North attracted strong international migratory flows and were affected by an intense process of residential diffusion from the city centres to the fringes. Over the last decade, labour migration flows from other countries drastically decreased, and the first signs of re-urbanisation of urban cores have appeared. Based on a large statistical dataset on internal migration and intra-urban residential mobility from the beginning of this century to the present, this paper aims to analyse how spatial patterns of urban mobility have changed the distribution of natives and migrants in the cores, rings and suburbs, with particular regard to the urban regions of Rome and Milan.

As migrants settle in their destination country, for those who reunited the family or after childbirth childcare becomes a priority. Most studies on migrants’ childcare arrangements have focused on parental use of formal childcare rather than on different informal childcare solutions by analysing only families with preschool-age children. Italy poses an interesting case study because its welfare system is characterised by a familistic model of care, based on solidarity between generations. In familistic countries, migrants’ childcare solutions are more constrained. In this study, we analysed differences in informal childcare needs and arrangements for children younger than 14 between Italians and migrants from different countries of origin. We merged two surveys conducted by the Italian National Statistics Institute in 2011–2012: ‘Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens’, a sample of households with at least one migrant with foreign citizenship, and ‘Multiscopo—Aspects of Daily Life’, a sample of households in Italy. We found that household composition and parents’ employment status play an important role in shaping informal childcare arrangements. Overall, migrants are less likely to use informal childcare, especially grandparents, than Italians but when they do, they rely more on other relatives and non-relatives than Italians. Moreover, differences emerge across migrant subgroups. This study is the first in Italy to contribute to an understanding of the role of migrant status in determining parents’ childcare arrangements for children up to 13 years.

Southern European studies of migrants' spatial distribution within metropolitan cities (MCs) are increasingly relevant to understanding residential segregation and marginalisation, particularly of foreign nationals. This paper leverages original and partially unpublished data to examine overall and foreign national specific segregation over two decades in Rome MC and Milan MC, the two largest Italian MCs. We introduce a 5-class concentric ring typology to describe and uncover geographical patterns within the MCs and focus on the spatial and temporal distribution of four selected foreign nationalities: Romanian, Bangladeshi, Chinese, and Filipino. Results reveal heterogeneity in overall and foreign national specific distributions over time both within and between Rome MC and Milan MC. Comparing across groups and MCs we identify similarities but also unique patterns. These results shed light on the peculiarity of the urban demographic Italian landscape and raise questions regarding recent theories about residential segregation in the urban contexts of Southern Europe.

In this paper, we apply the novel Fuzzy First-Order Dominance (F-FOD) methodology to rank migrant subpopulations in Lombardy (Italy), in terms of multidimensional poverty and social fragility, for the year 2014, with the purpose to possibly provide useful support to policy-makers, in targeting relief interventions from poverty and discomfort. The F-FOD methodology allows for the direct comparison of different distributions of poverty and fragility, assessed by means of suitable ordinal multi-indicator systems, so extending to this more complex setting, the usual univariate first-order dominance criterion. It also provides complimentary “incomparability” scores, to assess to what extent the final rankings are reliable or instead forcing. It turns out that the levels of poverty and fragility of migrant subpopulations are quite different and, in particular, that the time since migrations has a key impact, on the identification of most critical cases, which typically involve recently migrated people. Evidence also emerges that the temporal poverty/fragility trajectories of migrants, distinguished by country of origin, follow different paths, suggesting how policy interventions must be properly, and differently, tuned to be effective.

In the international literature, the principal task of grandparents is generally recognized as helping their children in providing childcare. Most of those studies analyzed grandparental childcare on the whole population, and few have focused on co-resident grandparent(s), which turns out to be an understudied topic in the European context. Further, most of them investigated the effect of childcare on grandparents’ health status. However, the elderly population can both provide and receive care. Using two Italian surveys released by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, the “Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizen (2011–2012)” and the “Multiscopo–Aspetti della vita quotidiana (2011)”, the study aims to analyze differences in grandparental childcare provided by co-resident grandparents between Italian and migrant households, considering both the role played by grandparents’ self-rated health (SRH) and gender. We identify four grandparents’ profiles by combining grandparents’ SRH and their attitude towards looking after their grandchild(ren). Subsequently, we apply multinomial logistic regressions, and we compute average marginal effects to facilitate results interpretations. Results display that migrant co-resident grandparents are less likely to declare bad SRH and no-childcare and are more likely to declare good SRH and to provide childcare than Italian grandparents. Moreover, when considering gender differences, the real role is revealed: we find that women have a higher probability to report poor health and care for their grandchild(ren) than men. Such findings illustrate that grandparents’ cohabitation decision is based upon the difference between their need for care and offer to care, and second, in addition to migrant status and SRH, gender is a determinant of grandparents’ childcare: women look after their grandchild(ren) more than men, whatever their health status.

Quante saranno e come saranno le famiglie italiane nei prossimi vent’anni? Gli scenari che emergono dalle previsioni sembrano convergere verso tendenze già note: la crescita (fino a un milione di famiglie aggiuntive) del numero di famiglie, oggi pari a 25,8 milioni di unità; il prolungamento della permanenza dei figli nella famiglia d’origine, anche fino ad età avanzate (fino a 45 anni), con il conseguente slittamento in avanti della formazione di nuove famiglie; famiglie sempre più piccole, individuali (di giovani, ma anche meno giovani –i single di ritorno-, e di anziani) o coppie senza figli; famiglie con figli in progressiva riduzione. Dal quadro che emerge si possono fare alcune considerazioni. L’orientamento verso un sistema valoriale individualistico pone la riproduttività (oggi attestata a 1,29 figli per donna) in seconda linea nello scandire le fasi di vita degli individui e ciò si riflette in una sempre più bassa fecondità e un sempre più accentuato invecchiamento della popolazione. Il continuo prolungamento della permanenza dei giovani nella condizione di figlio deve indurre a riflettere sulla necessità di fornire a questa popolazione i necessari strumenti per consentire loro di emanciparsi, per entrare, a pieno titolo, nella parte attiva della popolazione. Infine, il quadro descritto non tiene conto degli effetti della pandemia da Covid-19. Realisticamente essa lascerà un segno sulla mortalità della fascia di popolazione più anziana e verosimilmente invertirà la tendenza alla crescita della speranza di vita. Gli effetti indiretti sul sistema economico, in particolare sulla disoccupazione, potranno costituire un forte freno alla formazione di nuove famiglie, soprattutto quelle dei giovani, con la conseguenza di un calo della fecondità, stante l’incertezza dei progetti di vita. Non sono altresì trascurabili neppure gli effetti psico-sociali indotti dal “social distancing”: la paura del contagio e la contrazione delle opportunità relazional

The internal movements of migrants are less frequently studied than international migration, although they have important labour, social, welfare and immigrant policy implications. By assuming the family as the unit of analysis, this paper examines the mechanism of selection between the foreigners who move internally and who do not, in Italy. Hypotheses are that having a family, improved economic performance, incorrect information about the first location, and discrimination, increase the propensity to move. Data come from the Italian survey “Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens” (Istat 2011–2012). Results of the models show that internal migration is positively associated with family commitment, scant knowledge of the first destination, and no welcoming network. The paper enlarges the literature by stressing the intertwines between internal and international migration and the family commitment as the main driver of internal mobility of foreigners in Italy.

Immigrants’ integration is a process that develops differently across countries, depending on the characteristics of the target population and on the context. Integration can be measured with micro- or macro-approaches. There is a scarcity of literature based on a micro-approach devoted to comparing integration outcomes across countries. This paper contributes to this research field. This study aims to evaluate immigrants’ integration in relation to access to nationality, long-term residence, and family reunion. The evaluation concerns the gap between expected and realised integration and the role of context across seven European countries. Analyses are based on the Immigrant Citizens Survey (2011–2012) and the MIPEX III indicators (2011). Through a micro-approach, an integration score at the individual level, then summarised as an overall score, is suggested. MIPEX III scores are compared to integration scores to evaluate the more- or less-favourable context. Both expected and realised integration outcomes for the three events are higher in Germany, France, and Belgium than in the other countries. Only for the access to nationality the expected and realised integrations are positively correlated with context. Moreover, Germany, France, and Belgium are characterised by integration and context higher than the average, and positive net integration. Differences between expected and realised integration outcomes account for mismatched interests between immigrants and the host society. Negative net integration, in Italy and Portugal, allows us to foresee that improvements in context cannot substantially help integration outcomes here. Analyses by gender support the need for the adoption of a micro-approach in integration studies.

In this paper, we present a multidimensional fuzzy analysis of the levels and the patterns of poverty and social fragility of migrants’ families, in the Italian region of Lombardy, in year 2014. Migrants’ poverty emerges as a complex trait, better described as a stratification of nuanced patterns than in black and white terms; Lombard migrants are in fact affected, to different extents, by “a diffused sharing of deprivation facets” and cannot be trivially split into deprived and non-deprived. The paper employs innovative data analysis tools from the Theory of Partially Ordered Sets; compared to mainstream monetary approaches, this leads to more realistic estimates of poverty diffusion and eliminates some well-known biases of standard evaluation procedures, providing strong support to the use of partial order concepts and tools in social evaluation studies.

Due to both their previous fragile condition in the country of origin and to the instable situation in the host country, immigrants tend to be poorer than natives. The consumption expenditure of households of different sizes is made equivalent to that of a family of two people using coefficients which take into account the different needs and economies of scale matching to an increasing number of members. In Italy, since the Eighties the equivalence scale of Carbonaro has been adopted. This conventional equivalence scale has been calculated for the Italian population, based on 1981-1983 consumption data. On applying it to immigrant households in order to estimate the poverty line, 40% of migrants emerge as being included among the “poor” and as many as 21% among the “poorest”. This result suggests that the method of estimate deserves at least to be discussed. In this study we intend to question the use of the equivalence scale of Carbonaro to estimate the poverty level among immigrants. Based on preliminary results, although the poverty incidence among immigrants remains fairly stable regardless of the scale adopted, some interesting differences emerge with reference to the qualitative characteristics of the “poor”. In particular, the poverty level of some sub-populations is under/over-estimated according to the scale adopted. These results allow us to make some interesting remarks concerning the use of a conventional measure of poverty among migrants and add some useful considerations to a possible review of this approach. The equivalence scale is calculated on the basis of the 2004-2012 ISMU Surveys on Migrants in the Lombardy Region. The poverty incidence calculated using ISMU Surveys is compared with that obtained from the 2009 EU-SILC Italian Module on Foreign Population.

The shape of the Italian family has radically transformed since the second half of the last century: both vertical and horizontal ties have loosened due to major changes in marriage and fertility. The signs of modernity (increases in cohabitation, birth outside marriaghe, separation, and divorce) have clashed with the persistence of the traditional model of the "strong" family (through the long stay in the family of origin, for example), causing a short circuit in the population vitality. The most dynamic group consists of foreign families, a relatively new phenomenon for the Italian society, which has grown along with the development of the integration process. This study aims to deeply investigate these dynamics and to depict possible future scenarios (both in numeric and structural terms) on the basis of the projected data