Southern Europe · data through 2024
Italy is both a major destination, especially for care and agricultural work, and a country whose own young people continue to leave.
Twenty five year view
These lines show migrant stock, meaning people living outside their birth country at each point in time. They do not show annual arrivals.
Why people move
Communities from Romania, Albania, Morocco, and Ukraine are the largest, with care work for an ageing population a central sector. Sea arrivals receive most public attention while regular work migration is quietly larger.
Connections
Common destinations
Germany, United Kingdom, Switzerland, France, Spain
Common origins
Romania, Albania, Morocco, Ukraine, China, India
Adapting and finding support
Care workers often live in the household they serve, which blurs work and rest. Permit renewal cycles are slow and can interrupt employment.
Trade union help desks and Caritas centres are the most accessible practical support.
Use the support guideResearch that explains this pattern
Anthropology
Many families are not here or there but genuinely both, with money, decisions, care, and authority moving constantly across the border.
Integration and continued attachment to home rise together rather than trading off.
Nina Glick Schiller, Linda Basch, and Cristina Blanc Szanton
Psychology
The strain of language, status loss, discrimination, and unfamiliar systems produces a measurable load on health, distinct from the trauma of any journey.
Distress often peaks one to three years after arrival, not on the first day.
John W. Berry and colleagues; later clinical work on migrant mental health
Anthropology
Sending money home is not only economic. It maintains standing, honours obligation, and keeps a person a member of the family they left.
People send money they cannot spare, and stopping carries social cost heavier than the financial one.
Marcel Mauss on the gift, applied in contemporary migration ethnography
Support inside and beyond Italy
Reception, food, legal orientation, and integration help across the country.
People in need, including migrants
OpenLegal advice, health, schooling, and shelter for refugees.
Refugees and people seeking asylum
OpenAssistance, voluntary return, reintegration, and counter trafficking support through the local office.
Anyone moving, arriving, or returning
OpenThese are public organisations. The project is not affiliated with them and cannot guarantee outcomes. Nothing here is legal advice or an emergency service.
Figures are rounded published estimates. Causes and adaptation differ within every country and should not be read as a verdict about any person.