Italian Emigration: Basic Characteristic and Trends with Special Reference to the Last Twenty Years

Abstract

Italy's external migration has been the most considerable in Europe because of the largest quantity and the longest residence abroad. From the standpoint of statistics, this movement can be studied from the time of the political unification of the country, even though we may come up with some uncertain figures. The 1861 Census presents the first data regarding Italians abroad: about one hundred thousand in the American continent. Since then no fewer than 26 million Italians emigrated abroad. It is more difficult, however, to know the number of returns (that in the first decade were not regularly recorded). In any event, from the year 1900 more than 10 million Italians left their country permanently. Considering the natural demographic increase, the median age, and the distribution of emigrants, some have projected a total of 40 million persons as the number of the descendants of Italian migrants. It is, however, a projection based on personal estimates and theoretical considerations that we mention just to give an idea of the entity of the phenomenon, even from a relative point of view. In fact, Italian emigration made up at least half of the total interEuropean population movement, and it was in the first place of Euro? pean emigration overseas since the beginning of the XX century, with the occasional exception of British emigration. The first period of Italian emigration reaches to the year 1900. The gross total emigration was about 7 million persons. It was mostly individual emigration, 2/3 of which originated from Northern Italy and 3/5 of which was directed toward European countries. The second period span from the beginning of the century to the outbreak of World War I (1915) and involved about 9 million migrants. Three characteristics distinguish this period