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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 This paper leverages original and partially unpublished data to examine overall and foreign national specific segregation over two decades in Rome MC and Milan MC, the two largest Italian MCs.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.

Ageing and migration are two of Europe’s fundamental demographic processes, challenging a wide range of social policies. Their intersection generates a wide taxonomy of types of individuals, from the most well-off and active ones to those more deprived and marginalised and for whom being old and having a migration background represents a double jeopardy. Yet in discussions of the ‘demographic time bomb’ of ageing, the special circumstances of ageing migrants are rarely recognised. Thus far, in Europe, very little is known about ageing populations with a migratory background, and this is even more true for Italy, that turned into an immigration country only in the late 1980s and where older migrants are a neglected, although growing, group in the Italian population. In this paper, we unpack ageing migrants’ wellbeing by focusing on life satisfaction, as a broader indicator of individual’s wellbeing; in particular, we analyse the effect of migration experiences on migrants’ perception of the quality of life in old age. We use data from the Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens survey (2011–2012) and build several indicators related to different structural and socio-cultural dimensions of integration to analyse different patterns of association with life satisfaction among different groups of ageing migrants in Italy. Our study has important implications form both theoretical and policy perspective as it contributes to the advancement of original knowledge on the factors that shape wellbeing in later life in a context of migration.

In this paper, we address the measurement of vulnerability at municipality level, by using novel non-aggregative tools for the construction of synthetic indicators and for the extraction of rankings, based on the theory of partially ordered sets. We compare the results of the non-aggregative procedure to those provided by the Italian National Institute of Statistics, through the Index of Social and Material Vulnerability (applied to 2011 census data) and show that, although the overall pictures rendered by the two approaches are very similar, they are not equivalent, some local areas being resolved and some municipalities being ranked differently. The synthetic vulnerability scores are complemented with a measure of the degree of diversity of the vulnerability patterns, to give a more faithful picture of the complexity of the phenomenon and provide policy-makers with a more realistic view on it.

Access to and utilization of preventive health services are diversely distributed among immigrants. This paper aims to test the impact of structural, socio-economic, cultural, and contextual factors, and to test whether the acculturation theory holds true for migrants in Italy. Based on the “Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizens” survey (2011–2012), this paper shows that utilization of preventive health services among immigrants depends on structural characteristics and highlights the relevance of social interactions between foreigners and natives. Finally, the paper concludes that the acculturation model holds true for immigrants in Italy.

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.

Using the ‘Social Condition and Integration of Foreign Citizen’ survey (2011-2012) for Italy and the ‘Trajectoires et Origines’ survey (2008-2009) for France, we examined differences in the need for informal childcare and parental preferences in childcare (grandparents, other family and extra-family members) between migrants in Italy and France according to family demographic and socio-economic characteristics, migrants’ background and contextual factors. Results suggest that migrants’ choices and preferences are strongly affected by the household composition, mother occupational status and migrants’ country of origin. Furthermore, our results highlight the role played by the destination country, which can shape migrants’ choices and options. The use of informal childcare is higher for migrants in Italy than in France, even among the same origin areas.

This paper examines the determinants of sexual satisfaction among Italian young men and women at the beginning of their adulthood, taking into account the different stages of sentimental and sexual transitions. We based the analyses on the data collected in 2017 by the SELFY Survey on a sample of 7842 university students in Italy. Results of the logistic regression models highlight that, above all, sexual satisfaction is positively associated with the frequency of intercourse within a stable and exclusive relationship. Furthermore, results highlight the essential role of all transitions, sexual and sentimental, in enhancing sexual satisfaction, both in a positive and negative direction. Religion has a positive effect too, but only among students who have not yet had intercourse, expressing a protective effect of the adherence to beliefs. Significant differences between young men and women emerged mainly concerning performance, other conditions being equal.

Ethnic segregation is defined as the degree to which two or more subgroups of population by ethnicity are separated from each other. Whether or not two groups are separated is a debate eflecting on the definition of what ‘separation’ means: sharing the same space where to reside, having the same opportunities for daily encounters or for work, or the space for leisure and cultivation of friendship relations. In this paper, we focus on the relation between ethnic residential segregation and friendship relations. We analyse the residential behaviour and friendship of foreigners in Milan (the nine major citizenships), which is the most important urban area in the national settlement system of Italy and the most attractive area in the migratory Italian panorama. We show how residential behaviour can only partially explain friendship relations between immigrants and natives, since different ethnic groups tend to settle on the territory and interact with others depending on the characteristics of individuals and their immigration history. Data come from the population register (2005–2009) and the 2007 Regional Observatory for Integration and Multi-ethnicity Survey. Results are based on indices of segregation and multilevel multinomial logistic regression models

Italy and Spain, as countries of recent immigration and high irregularity rates, have struggled to adapt their statistical system, especially their population registers, to adequately reflect the presence of an increasing number of immigrants in their territory. The population registers of the two countries have adapted differently to these changing realities: Spain introduced significant improvements in Padrón which have increased its coverage and accuracy. This is still not the case in Italy, making it necessary to resort to non-random sampling methods. The paper discusses the methodological implications of these differences and evaluates different methodological solutions based on both random and non-random sampling methods in both countries.

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the Italian political representation could change if just the population with the right to vote would be considered by the election rules. More specifically, we evaluate the impact of non-European foreigners, without the right to vote, on the political representation at the local level. The results show that non-EU citizens play a significant role in defining the elective procedures for more than 1,300 municipalities directly involved in the forthcoming elections.

Through a statistic survey on the phenomenon of crime towards the economic activities in the Milan area, this paper proposes a set of indicators of the likelihood of being a victim of a criminal event in correspondence of a specific context. The methodology allows to point out estimates on the extent of the phenomenon, its nature and incidence, as well as on its peculiarities at sectorial and territorial level.