Residential migrations in Italian Metropolitan Local Labour Market Areas: spatial patterns and age-structure effects.

The contribution analyses the residential migrations (changes of residence) that occurred in Italy during the last ten years within the 21 metropolitan Local Labour Market Areas defined according to the functional criteria of work related commuting patterns. The study focuses on four population subgroups defined by combining information on citizenship and place of birth: Nationals Native-Born, Nationals Foreign-Born, EU citizens and non-EU citizens. The analysis is based on the classic core-periphery scheme where the most populous municipality of the LLMA represents the core and the other municipalities form the periphery. A first aim of the study is to define the spatial patterns of migration of the four selected groups within the metropolitan LLMAs to highlight aspects of similarity and difference. The data available allow analysing the migration patterns for the pre-crisis period and for the years of the crisis. A second aim is to estimate the impact (net effect) that the residential migration flows of the various selected groups have on the age structure of the different LLMAs. Do the residential migratory movements slow down aging process in the cores of the different systems? Or, on the contrary, are the peripheries those that benefit from the demographic effects produced by these migratory movements.