Detecting Foreigners’ Spatial Residential Patterns in Urban Contexts: Two Tales from Italy

Abstract

The paper presents an original application of the Gini’s centre of population (MC) and its Standard Deviational Ellipse (SDE) in the field of spatial distribution of foreigners. The proposed measures have been applied to the top five foreign communities (and Italians) counted in 2011 Italian demographic census in the municipality of Rome and Naples. The results show that, compared to Italians, in both municipalities the communities coming from Asia show spatial distributions characterized by quite clear residential patterns: a tendency to have high levels of spatial concentration and the centre of gravity (or mean centre) located at comparatively high distances from the one of the Italians. On the contrary, the communities coming from Central and Eastern Europe present a spatial residential pattern characterized by a quite high level of spatial dispersion and a centre of gravity very close to the one of the Italians. In an intermediate situation between these two spatial patterns there are the Peruvians. Some explanatory hypotheses are advanced. The Gini’s centre of population and its Standard Deviational Ellipse seem capable to synthesize the spatial distribution of foreign population and to detect their residential patterns.