Widespread Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in Italy

The graphs, data, and text are courtesy of the Pew Research Center and are published as part of the Pew Global Attitudes Project. The findings were originally published on January 12, 2010. They are available at http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1461/italy-widespread-anti-immigrant-sentiment.

Figure 1.

(facing page) Immigration Is a Very Big Problem. Italians were more likely than any other public included in a 47-nation survey conducted by Pew in 2007 to see immigration as a big problem in their country. More than nine-in-ten Italians (94 percent) consider immigration to be a big problem, including 64 percent who said it was a very big problem in Italy.

Figure 2.

(above) Influence of Immigrants Is . . .Italian opinion about the influence immigrants were having on their country was also among the most negative of the 47 nations surveyed in 2007. Nearly three-quarters of Italians said immigrants had a bad impact on their country; only in South Africa was this view as widespread, as 75 percent of South Africans said immigrants had a negative influence on their country.

Figure 3.

Views about Key Immigrant Groups. Italians expressed equally negative views of immigration from Eastern European countries as they do about immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Only about one-in-five Italians saw immigration from the Middle East and Africa and Eastern Europe as a good thing for Italy (20 percent and 22 percent, respectively).

Figure 4.

We Should Further Restrict and Control Immigration. Given Italians' concerns about immigration and negative views about key immigrant groups, it is not surprising that public opinion in that country is overwhelmingly in favor of tighter restrictions on immigration.