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→Demography of Italy
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==Demography of Italy== | ==Demography of Italy== | ||
'''The people''' | |||
*Ethnic groups | |||
Italians cannot be typified by any one physical characteristic, a fact that may be explained by the past domination of parts of the peninsula by different peoples. The Etruscans in Tuscany and Umbria and the Greeks in the south preceded the Romans, who “Latinized” the whole country and maintained unity until the 5th century. Jews arrived in Italy during the Roman Republic, remaining until the present day. With the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West, Italy suffered invasions and colonization, which inevitably affected its ethnic composition. With some exceptions, the north was penetrated by Germanic tribes crossing the Alps, while the south was colonized by Mediterranean peoples arriving by sea. The Byzantines were dominant in the south for five centuries, coinciding with the supremacy of the Lombards (a Germanic tribe) in Benevento and other parts of the mainland. In the 9th century Sicily was invaded by the Saracens, who remained until the Norman invasion in the early 11th century. The Normans were succeeded by the Aragonese in 1282; in 1720 Sicily came under Austrian rule. This mixed ethnic heritage explains the smattering of light-eyed, blond Sicilians in a predominantly dark-eyed, dark-haired people. Except for the Saracen domination, the Kingdom of Naples, which formed the lower part of the peninsula, had a similar experience, whereas the northern part of Italy, separated from the south by the Papal States, was much more influenced by the dominant force of the Austrians. The Austrian admixture, combined with the earlier barbarian invasions, may account for the greater frequency of light-eyed, blond Italians originating in the north. The ethnic mixing continues to the present day. Since the 1970s, Italy has been receiving immigrants from a number of less-developed countries. A predominantly female migration from the Philippines and other Asian countries compares with a predominantly male influx from North Africa. With the accession of numerous former Soviet-bloc countries to the European Union in 2004 and 2007, immigration from eastern Europe soared. In the early 21st century about five million foreigners—roughly half of them from eastern Europe—resided on Italian territory. | |||
*Languages | |||
Standard Italian, as a written administrative and literary language, was in existence well before the unification of Italy in the 1860s. However, in terms of spoken language, Italians were slow to adopt the parlance of the new nation-state, identifying much more strongly with their regional dialects. Emigration in the late 19th and early 20th century played an important role in spreading the standard language; many local dialects had no written form, obliging Italians to learn Italian in order to write to their relatives. The eventual supremacy of the standard language also owes much to the advent of television, which introduced it into almost every home in the country. The extremely rich and, hitherto, resilient tapestry of dialects and foreign languages upon which standard Italian has gradually been superimposed reveals much about Italy’s cultural history. Not surprisingly, the greatest divergence from standard Italian is found in border areas, in the mountains, and on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia. | |||
Only a few languages spoken in limited geographic areas enjoy any legal protection or recognition. These are French, in Valle d’Aosta; German and the Rhaetian dialect Ladino in some parts of the Trentino–Alto Adige; Slovene in the province of Trieste; Friulian (another Rhaetian dialect) and Sardinian, spoken by the two largest linguistic minorities in Italy, received official recognition in 1992. Linguistic minorities persisting in the Alps are, broadly speaking, the result of migratory movements from neighbouring countries or changes in the borderline. The French and Franco-Provençal spoken in Valle d’Aosta date from union with Savoy, but the German spoken in the same area dates from the 12th-century emigration of German sheepherders from the upper valleys of the Rhône. The German spoken in the Trentino–Alto Adige dates back to Bavarian occupation in the 5th century, whereas that spoken in the provinces of Verona and Vicenza dates from a more recent colonization in the 12th century. Some of the Alpine areas have such a complex linguistic makeup that precise measurement of linguistic communities is impossible. In Friuli–Venezia Giulia, for example, many communes are bi-, tri-, and even quadrilingual, as in the case of Canale, where Slovene, Italian, German, and Friulian coexist. In certain Occitan-speaking parts of Piedmont, Italian is the official language, Occitan is spoken at home, and the Piedmontese dialect is used in trading relations with people from lowland areas. Farther south, in Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Puglia, and Sicily, isolated linguistic communities persist against the odds. A dialect of Albanian known as Arbëresh is spoken by the descendants of 15th-century Albanian mercenaries; Croatian, the smallest minority language, spoken by some 2,000 people, has survived in splendid isolation in Campobasso province in Molise; and Greek, or “Grico” (of uncertain origin), may be heard in two areas in Calabria and Puglia. Catalan, too, has survived in the town of Alghero in the northwest of Sardinia, dating from the island’s capture by the crown of Aragon in 1354. | |||
*Religion | |||
Roman Catholicism has played a historic and fundamental role in Italy. It was the official religion of the Italian state from 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty, until a concordat was ratified in 1985 that ended the church’s position as the state religion, abolished compulsory religious teaching in public schools, and reduced state financial contributions to the church. More than four-fifths of the population declare themselves Roman Catholics, although the number of practicing Catholics is declining. An estimated 450,000 people worship in the Protestant church, including Lutherans, Methodists, Baptists, and Waldensians. They are all members of the Federation of Evangelical Churches in Italy (Federazione delle Chiese Evangeliche in Italia) founded in 1967. Albanian communities in two dioceses and one abbey in the Mezzogiorno practice the Eastern Orthodox rite. Migration that began in the latter third of the 20th century brought with it many people of non-Christian religious beliefs, significantly Muslims, who number more than one million. The Jewish community fluctuated between 30,000 and 47,000 throughout the 20th century. In 1987 Jews obtained special rights from the Italian state allowing them to abstain from work on the Sabbath and to observe Jewish holidays. | |||
*Traditional regions | |||
Italy is divided into 20 administrative regions, which correspond generally with historical traditional regions, though not always with exactly the same boundaries. A better-known and more general way of dividing Italy is into four parts: the north, the centre, the south, and the islands. The north includes such traditional regions as Piedmont, which is characterized by some French influence and was the seat of united Italy’s former royal dynasty; Liguria, extending southward around the Gulf of Genoa; Lombardy, which has long been noted for its productive agriculture and vigorously independent city communes and now for its industrial output; and Veneto, once the territory of the far-flung Venetian empire, reaching from Brescia to Trieste at its greatest extent. The centre includes Emilia-Romagna, with its prosperous farms; the Marche, on the Adriatic side; Tuscany and Umbria, celebrated for their vestiges of Etruscan civilization and Renaissance traditions of art and culture; Latium (Lazio), which contains the Campagna, whose beautiful hills encircle the “Eternal City” of Rome; and the Abruzzo and Molise, regions of the highest central Apennines, which used to support a wild and remote people. The south, or Mezzogiorno, includes Naples and its surrounding fertile Campania; the region of Puglia, with its great plain crossed by oleander-bordered roads leading to the low Murge Salentine hills and the heel of Italy; and the poorer regions of Basilicata and Calabria. On the islands of Sicily and Sardinia are people who take pride in holding themselves apart from the inhabitants of mainland Italy. However, the south and the islands have changed a great deal since about 1960 and have become more modernized. Within these four main divisions, the variety of the much smaller traditional districts is very great and depends on history as well as on topography and economic conditions. | |||
*Settlement patterns | |||
:RURAL AREAS | |||
In general, rural life is in decline. The majority of the population of Italy live in cities and villages; only a fraction live in hamlets or in isolated houses. In the long Alpine valleys the economy was always both agricultural and commercial, with towns such as Aosta and Bolzano at the outlets of the lateral valleys and agricultural settlements higher up or on the slopes of hills. The perpetual subdivision of landholdings makes a purely agricultural economy precarious in this region except in the upper Adige, where the Germanic system of primogeniture survived, producing the masi, family holdings that are passed on to the eldest son intact. These rural areas now also include an increasing number of skiing and tourist centres, such as Courmayeur and Cortina d’Ampezzo. In the band of Alpine and Apennine foothills, the villages, often situated on the knolls and flanks of the hills, are linked by roads that hold to the heights, away from the humid valley floors. Each village is usually grouped around a church, a castle, or a nobleman’s palace, with its fields on the slopes around it and woodlands lower down. There are innumerable plum and cherry orchards and, above all, vineyards; their wines (Conegliano and Monferrato) are famous. Lombardy is the only area in which the ancient rural way of life has been comprehensively displaced by the development of heavy industry. The Padano-Venetian-Emilian plain is the most important agricultural and stockbreeding region of Italy. The upland plain hosts the great industrial centres such as Turin, Milan, and Busto Arsizio, while the lowland plain remains socially as well as economically rural. | |||
Villages high in the Apennines are less prosperous than those of similar elevation in the Alps. They are still isolated, the ground is infertile, and land is rarely owned by those who work it. Tourism and the expansion of cottage craft industries, such as the porcelain making at Gubbio, near Perugia, have helped these towns survive. The lower hills and plains of Italy are covered with agricultural villages in which a wide variety of crops and vegetables are grown, though often in low yield. In Puglia and Basilicata large farms are staffed by labourers who live in urban centres, such as Cerignola and Altamura, and travel to work in the countryside. Some fertile and well-watered plains, such as the Neapolitan countryside, have a high level of productivity, especially of market vegetables. Here there is direct ownership of land and fairly dense settlement. In Sicily, settlement is clustered in widely spaced, nucleated towns, with extensive pastureland and farming. In Sardinia the settlement is sparse and mainly inland, and most of the local fishing industry is carried on by men from the mainland. | |||
:URBAN CENTRES | |||
Italian cities vary greatly in terms of population, economic activities, and cultural traditions. Many of them have developed close economic links with surrounding communities, forming major metropolitan areas, such as Rome, Milan, Naples, and Palermo. Slightly less populous are the urban centres of Genoa-Savona, Bologna, Catania, Messina–Reggio di Calabria, Cagliari, and Trieste-Monfalcone. The geographic pattern shows an even distribution of large metropolitan areas across the whole country, while medium-sized cities are more numerous in the north than in the south, where there is a concentration of small towns. | |||
Historically, the location of Italian urban centres played a central role in their economic development. In the Po valley, cities such as Milan, Pavia, and Cremona were well placed for commerce, being situated at the confluence of roads or rivers. Another group of cities were those on the coast, at the mouths of rivers, or on lagoons protected by sandbars; these included Savona, Genoa, Naples, Messina, Palermo, Ancona, and Venice. At present the most economically viable urban centres are those able to engage in global trade, such as Milan, and medium-sized centres such as those in northern Tuscany that engage in light manufacturing. | |||
*Demographic trends | |||
Throughout the centuries, Italy’s population curve has undergone many changes, often in parallel development with population trends in other European countries. The mid-14th-century plague reduced the peninsula’s population considerably, and a long period of population growth ended at the beginning of the 17th century. From the early 18th century until unification in the 1860s, a slight, steady growth prevailed, although it was interrupted during the Napoleonic Wars. From the latter half of the 19th century to the latter half of the 20th century, the population more than doubled, despite high levels of emigration. Interestingly, the natural population increase was frequently highest during the decades of highest emigration, although there is no obvious causal relationship between the two. | |||
Italy’s overall demographic trends are still fairly consistent with those of other advanced western European countries, which experienced declining fertility and mortality rates following World War II. The growth rate of the population is gradually slowing, with most of the increase coming from immigration; birth rates and death rates are virtually identical. However, the national figures conceal contrasting regional trends. In general, the birth rate and average family size are higher in the south of Italy than in the north, although populations in Molise, Basilicata, and Calabria are declining through continued emigration. The mortality rate is slightly lower in the south than in the north as a result of improved medical care and a younger population; in certain northern regions, especially Liguria, populations are decreasing because the birth rate is falling faster than the mortality rate. For the country as a whole, life expectancy rose during the second half of the 20th century, reflecting higher nutritional, sanitary, and medical standards. At the beginning of the 21st century, the majority of the population was between 20 and 49 years old, with the largest group between ages 30 and 44. | |||
:INTERNAL MIGRATION PATTERNS | |||
Since the unification of Italy in the mid-19th century, internal movements have followed a regular pattern—south to north and east to west. People have moved from the southern regions and Sicily to the central regions of Lazio and Tuscany and to the northwest—to Lombardy, Liguria, and Piedmont. They moved in the same way from Veneto to the northwest. Movement from Emilia-Romagna, Marche, and Umbria to regions in the northwest has also been significant. Population movement was relatively slight during the fascist era between the wars, when permits were required for movement inside the country. Exceptionally, substantial numbers of Italians seeking work at the huge Lingotto vehicle factory run by Fiat were granted permits to go to Turin. | |||
After World War II and the demise of fascism, Italy entered a period of unprecedented economic growth and high population mobility. The prosperity of the urban areas, especially the industrial triangle of Lombardy-Piedmont-Liguria, contrasted with continuing hardship and poverty in the upland and rural areas, especially in the south. Rapid industrialization in the urban centres acted as a strong “pull” factor, encouraging rural workers to abandon the land and head for the cities. The disparity of wealth and of employment between urban and rural areas triggered a period of intense rural depopulation from the uplands in the Alps, the Apennines, Sicily, and Calabria and an influx of migrants to Rome, Milan, Turin, and Genoa. This movement continues today, although the slowing of economic growth has reduced the “pull” exerted by the industrial areas. Unemployment runs high, especially among the young. | |||
:EMIGRATION AND IMMIGRATION | |||
In nearly a century between 1876 and 1970, an estimated 25 million Italians left the country in search of work. Of those, 12 million left for destinations outside Europe. In the 1860s, transatlantic migration was most frequent among northern Italians and was often associated with certain trades; for example, farmers, artists, and street traders tended to emigrate to the United States. Two decades later, however, the trend had become a mass phenomenon, with the main migrants increasingly emanating from the south. Their principal destination was the United States, favoured by more than half the emigrants, the others choosing Argentina, Brazil, and Canada. Some also went to Australia. In the 1920s the United States introduced strict immigration laws, and economic conditions in Brazil and Argentina deteriorated so much that transatlantic emigration was stymied. In addition, the fascist regime opposed emigration, and during World War II emigration halted almost completely. After 1945 destinations were mainly European, the most popular being France initially and then West Germany and Switzerland. During that period the nature of emigration patterns changed, becoming less stable. In many cases the emigrants were mostly male, as some European countries refused entry to workers’ relatives because of housing shortages. Often Italian workers would remain abroad for short periods of time, returning every so often to Italy. On the eve of the 1973 oil embargo, more than 850,000 Italians were working in Switzerland and countries of the European Economic Community (EEC; later succeeded by the European Union [EU]), where the ensuing recession and rising unemployment forced many Italians back home. | |||
In 1972 Italy for the first time registered more people entering the country than leaving, in part because of repatriation but also as a result of immigration from Asia, Africa, and Latin America. For several years the scale of the influx of non-European immigrants was difficult to assess, as no policy existed either to measure or to control it until the mid-1980s. The collapse of communist regimes in eastern Europe brought fresh waves of immigrants from Poland, Romania, Albania, and the Yugoslav region. Many arrived via seaports on the Adriatic coast, claiming refugee status. Some were repatriated, but others were relocated to inland destinations. An ongoing difficulty is the flow of illegal immigrants from Albania. In 2010 there were about five million foreigners in Italy, with a plurality originating from eastern Europe. The majority of new arrivals settled in the north and centre of Italy, but the south had a relatively higher proportion of African and North American immigrants than the north. | |||
==Economy of Italy== | ==Economy of Italy== | ||
==Government and Society of Italy== | ==Government and Society of Italy== | ||