It’s the demography, stupid!
Giorgia Meloni is changing course on immigration. Quietly.
Giorgia Meloni, the right-wing Italian Prime Minister since 2022, is finally discovering the deeper meaning of the savvy Italian saying, “Il tempo è galantuomo”. Indeed, time is a gentleman who, by the way, usually serves his revenge on a cold dish. On Monday, June 30th, the Italian government approved a decree that allows up to 500,000 legal immigrants to work in the country in the next three years (around 165,000 per year), mostly in seasonal and low-skilled jobs. A notable shift for a politician who rose to power by promising to impose a naval blockade on small boats carrying illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean!
Yet, for all the surprise that this news might provoke, there are three factors to bear in mind. Firstly, and chiefly, the dismal state of Italian demography. A notable friend of Ms. Meloni put it bluntly in 2023 when he wrote on his own social media platform X (formerly Twitter) ‘Italy is disappearing!’ For once, Elon Musk was not wrong. According to recent data published by ISTAT, the national statistical agency of Italy, in 2024 the country’s population fell for the 10th consecutive year to around 58.9 million people. Conversely, in 2014 almost 61 million people were residents of Italy.
Nor is the situation likely to get any better in the near future. The Italian fertility rate reached a record low last year, falling to a mere 1.18 children per woman. It should be at around 2.1 children per woman in order to guarantee stability in the population, reckons a study of the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. Net migration, or the difference between the number of emigrants and that of immigrants, was around 95,000 people in 2024 and is far from offsetting the population decline.
Worse still, homegrown talent is leaving the country in ever greater numbers: in 2023 and 2024, ISTAT recorded that more than 270,000 Italians moved abroad, an increase of 36% compared with the previous two years. If emigrants worryingly include a greater proportion of graduates than the average population, those who remain are unevenly distributed as well. The North of the country, comprising the regions of Lombardy, Veneto and Emilia-Romagna, all strongly intertwined with German industry, is able to attract people from other regions and from abroad. Conversely, Central and especially Southern Italy stand to lose out in greater proportion than the rest of the country, exacerbating the already strong regional inequalities. Moreover, young professionals and students make up the bulk of the population of big cities like Milan and Bologna, whereas internal areas and smaller towns are getting older by the day. No wonder that elderly care, particularly in the more remote areas of the country, is an increasingly lucrative business and among the most likely to employ foreign workers. A recent paper by an immigration watchdog and a care worker trade union estimated that around 2.3 million caregivers will be needed in 2025 alone.
The second factor to bear in mind is that this turnaround is likely not to hurt the government much at the ballot box. To be sure, Italians remain deeply divided on immigration, be it legal or illegal, with the bulk of Ms. Meloni’s electorate strongly against it. However, the next election is two years away, and the Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia) party led by Ms. Meloni has enjoyed a strong lead over the main opposition Democratic Party (Partito Democratico) for the whole of this parliamentary term. Furthermore, the government is doing its best to keep a veil of silence on the issue, and so far it is largely succeeding. Most of the Italian press did not even put the news on its front page on Tuesday, while official social media channels have little to no incentive to promote the policy. As for the opposition, it is too busy fighting itself, as usual.
Italians (usually) don’t do it better
Finally, this government has followed pretty much all its recent predecessors (and in Italy, there are many of them) in allowing this kind of one-off immigrant entries. Technically, they constitute an exception to non-EU immigration rules, which are among the most stringent in the continent. After all, this legislation fits perfectly with a typical Italian tradition of setting harsh rules for everything from Covid guidelines to driving, and then allowing all kinds of exceptions to them.
A more sensible and long-lasting approach would involve a long-lasting reform of the immigration system, allowing more immigrants into the country to balance the internal demographic crisis. However, in all likelihood this is too big an ask for Ms. Meloni’s right-wing government.