The 2024 immigration report, presented in the Italian city of Termoli on February 13, noted that 13,771 foreigners were present in the region of Molise in 2024.
Some 13,771 foreigners were living in the southern Italian region of Molise last year, accounting for 4.8 percent of the population. Of them, 8,748 were from outside the EU.
A total of 4,800 were employed in the region with the largest share as domestic workers (38.1 percent), around 17.2 percent were employed in the agricultural sectors, industry accounted for about 3.8 percent of jobs, services for around 4.1 percent, and trade for about 4.3 percent.
These figures were contained in the 2024 immigration report presented on February 13 at a Termoli town council meeting.The event focused on explaining the latest figures on immigration to the Molise region.
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Active projects
Some 28 projects have been activated in the region with 892 positions and 27 entities tasked with the initiatives across the entire region.
"There are approximately 13,700 foreign residents in Molise, less than five percent of the total population," IDOS research center director Luca Di Sciullo said, whose organization is responsible for the report.
"The region can be a very interesting laboratory for politics, for opening up, and for reception that could become a sort of driving force, a national example. The services sector, especially, is very active in this regard."
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'Services sector acts as social shock absorber'
In Di Sciullo's eyes, an excessive amount of attention is given to migrant boat landings compared with that given to migration as a whole.
"We have emphasized migrant boat landings too much and focused almost all the attention on it as well as that small number of so-called forced migrants that arrive via sea, as well as those that arrive via land routes," he said.
"They are migrants that are asking for protection and will be housed in reception centers. Unfortunately, there is still a very clear separation between the CAS, the centers of initial reception set aside for asylum seekers where languages courses and other things have been cancelled, and the rest of the reception system including those who have already been granted some form of protection," he added.
"Beyond these types of legal distinctions, the services sector can act as a sort of shock absorber" Di Sciullo felt, especially in cases where other services might have disappeared following a change in laws or policy.