Statistics on Acquisitions of Citizenship: An Integrated Longitudinal Approach

Cinzia Conti , Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Rottino Fabio Massimo, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)
Salvatore Strozza, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II
Enrico Tucci, Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)

During the last decade, more than 800 thousand people obtained Italian citizenship. In 2017, most new citizenships of an EU-28 Member State were granted by Italy (146,600 equal to 18% of the EU-28 total) (Eurostat, 2019). Nevertheless, the corresponding statistics on the stock of population with acquired Italian citizenship are not available in Italy. In June 2019, the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat) disseminated for the first time, data on the stock of “naturalized” Italians. The statistics have been produced by updating the stock of Italians by acquisition, available at the Census (9th October 2011), with administrative flows (acquisition of citizens and demographic flows) from the Census date to the beginning of 2018. In the first part of the paper, we will describe the methods of estimations and present the main results of the data integration. The longitudinal approach, applied in the second part of this work, has been recommended by many authors (Perrin, 2006). Therefore, the different propensity of migrants to acquire the Italian citizenship has been analyzed by using regression models. The linkage with the Census data gives the opportunity to take into account many relevant characteristics (socio-demographic, migratory, and territorial) in order to individuate the elements that could be more relevant in the choice of becoming Italian.

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 Presented in Session 72. Naturalization and Citizenship