According to this year's annual report from the Migrantes Foundation, an organization within the Catholic Church working on the theme of migration, there are about 6.5 million Italians registered abroad, a figure described as being in "constant growth."

Today, Italians living outside Italy outnumber foreign residents in Italy by around one million, according to the Migrantes Italians in the World Report 2025.

"As of January 1, 2025, those registered in the AIRE (Registry of Italians Resident Abroad) total 6,412,752," the report states. "These citizens are in addition to the resident population calculated by ISTAT at 58,934,177, of whom 5,422,426 are foreigners."

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Twelve out of every hundred Italians live abroad

Based on the number of residents with Italian citizenship only (53,511,751), twelve out of every 100 Italians live abroad, equivalent to 11.9 percent. Considering the total resident population (Italians and foreigners), the share of Italians abroad drops to 10.9 percent.

According to the foundation, "the impact of mobility on Italy and its population has always been significant and has continued to grow over the past twenty years — particularly in the last decade."

The report highlights a steady increase in registrations to the AIRE: over 278,000 in the past year (+4.5 percent), nearly 479,000 in the past three years (+8.1 percent), and more than doubled since 2006 (+106.4 percent).

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Record number of departures in 2024, 76 percent choose Europe

Between 2006 and 2024, Italian emigration became a structural phenomenon, the report states.

After the 2008 economic crisis, departures rose steadily, reaching a record 155,732 in 2024. Europe remains the main destination (76 percent of total emigrants), led by the United Kingdom, Germany, and Switzerland.

Over the years, migration patterns have become increasingly circular and complex: people leave, return, and leave again.

Alongside young people, there has also been strong growth among women choosing to live abroad (+115.9 percent in twenty years, according to AIRE data) and Italians over 50, often grandparents or workers joining children and grandchildren abroad.

The migratory drive reflects both structural weaknesses in Italy -- precarious work, regional inequalities, and limited recognition of merit -- and a dimension of personal choice, curiosity, and new methods of planning lives.

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Slower growth of foreign residents in Italy

"The areas where Italians have settled in the rest of the world [referred to in Italian as l'estero --abroad] has long been called Italy's twenty-first region," notes the authors of the Migrantes Foundation report.

"What is less taken into consideration, however, is how rapidly its population is growing — and how swiftly its characteristics are changing."

Over the past twenty years, since 2006, Italy has recorded 1.6 million emigrations and 826,000 returns, with a negative balance of more than 817,000 citizens, mostly concentrated in Lombardy, the northeast, and the south of the country.

Meanwhile, the growth of foreign residents in Italy has slowed significantly. In 2019, the figures were identical -- 5.3 million for both Italians abroad and foreigners in Italy. Today, however, Italians abroad outnumber foreign residents in the country by about one million.

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