The Presence of Bangladeshis in Rome: Results of a Pilot Study
The Presence of Bangladeshis in Rome: Results of a Pilot Study Jana Kopecna Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Rome “La Sapienza” Introduction In Italy, immigration has been a recent, but rapidly growing phenomenon. Over the past few decades, Italy has undergone an important transformation, shifting from an emigration country to an immigration country and becoming one of the most important destination countries for immigrants in Europe. According to the data of the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), there were approximately 4.4 million foreign citizens residing in Italy on 1 January 2013, equal to 7.4% of the total residents. Considering the whole Italian territory, the three largest immigrant groups are Romanian (21.3% of the total foreign population), Albanian (10.6%) and Moroccan (9.7%). The immigrants from Bangladesh are now the 10th largest group, with 92,695 legally present individuals in Italy (2,1%) [ISTAT, 2012]. Obviously, the foreign citizens are not distributed equally on the Italian territory. Many of them have a specific settlement pattern with higher concentrations in certain areas of the country. Thus, despite the Bangladeshis represent the 10th largest immigrant community in Italy, they are the 3rd largest group in the Municipality of Rome [ISTAT, 2012]. It was only in the late 1980s that the first arrivals of Bangladeshi immigrants were registered in Rome and since then the capital city has become the principal destination of Bangladeshis arriving to Italy. According to the data of the Ministry of Interior, on 31.12.1991 there were 5,237 legally present Bangladeshis in Italy of whom 4,105 were registered in the Municipality of Rome [Knights, 1996b].
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