ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the parallel developments of the policies of managed labour migration and clandestine migration in Italy and France in the last 30 years. Migrants have become concentrated in the most dynamic parts of the country. The enlarged Northeast, a region covering all the territories east of the line Milan-Ancona, increased its share of the immigrant population of the whole country from 32 to 52 per cent between 1990 and 2002. The chapter particular focuses on typical of a phase of tumultuous development of immigration and Italy indeed was transformed from a legal presence of 148,000 foreigners in 1970 to 2.7 million in 2004. The development of immigration in Italy has been driven by labour migrants and followed at some distance by family reunification, leading to permanent settlement. Labour migration in Italy was initially regulated by secondary legislation giving the Ministry of Labour power to deny authorizations on the basis of general conditions of the labour market.
