ABSTRACT
In the past ten years, international migration between Romania and Italy has developed steadily. At the beginning of the 1990s, only a few thousand Romanians lived in Italy. By 2002, Romanians had come to represent the largest migrant community in the country. The regularisation process that took place in 2002 was surprising due to the large number of Romanians who obtained legal status. With over 240,000 (Ricci 2005) legal migrants, Italy became one of the main destinations for Romanian migrants, with the movement of people between the two countries growing considerably. According to different sources, in January 2007, there were some 350,000 to 550,000 Romanian migrants living in Italy (ISTAT 2008; Caritas Migrantes 2008). Estimates for 2008 suggest between 625,000 (ISTAT 2008) and 1,016,000 (Pittau, Ricci & Silj 2008) Romanians living on the peninsula. By 2009, 796,477 legal Romanian migrants were resident in Italy (ISTAT 2010). Entire communities from Romania had moved to Italy, maintaining transnational ties between the two countries – a circulation of capital, goods, people and values. This migration has opened up a complex field of investigation into migration practices, social change and mobility in Europe.
