The UK is a major recipient of migrant inflows from both other European countries and the rest of the world. Unlike the Italian experience (see Chapter 2), immigration to the UK is not a new phenomenon; substantial numbers of foreign-born workers entered the UK in the 1960s and 1970s. In recent years, however, the number of immigrants to the UK has increased considerably, primarily as a consequence of EU enlargements in 2004 and 2007.

Few policy issues generate as much heated rhetoric and embroiled debate as immigration regulation. Who should be allowed to transverse a border and become a citizen? What restrictions, if any, should a government place on the economic and social activity of migrants? In this book, we documented the varying approaches that governments in different parts of the world, and at different points in time, have approached this question.

International flows of people are a distinctive trait of our contemporary globalized world, as much as are international flows of goods, services, and ideas. Differently from the latter, however, migration faces a fierce opposition in most destination countries (Hatton and Williamson, 2005; Mayda, 2008). One reason for this may be that natives and immigrants compete for the same jobs and welfare programs.

Immigration is a contentious issue in most destination countries. From a purely economic perspective, the removal of barriers to labour mobility would allow for the efficient allocation of productive factors at the global level. At the same time, its distributional consequences may undermine the political support for the free movement of people across countries. Most importantly, natives in destination countries may oppose immigration on grounds other than just labour market competition.

The European Union has experienced a major refugee crisis in the last few years. The total number of individuals with recognized refugee status who reside in one of the EU15 countries increased from approximately 1 million in 2014 to 1.8 million in 2016. Over the same period, the number of asylum applications received by EU15 countries increased from 500,000 in 2014 to more than 1 million in 2015 and to 1.1 million in 2016, reaching an unprecedented 2.6 million applications submitted in just three years.

According to the US Census Bureau, as of 1 July 2017, just over 98% of all people living in the USA are the descendants of immigrants.1 Over the course of the country’s 250-year history, the rate of immigration and the composition of immigrants have varied dramatically. In the years between 1910 and 2013, roughly 5% to 15% of the US population was born outside of the country, with peaks in 1910 and 2013 and troughs in the 1960s and 1970s.

In this chapter, we examine the relationship between immigration and crime in Italy, focusing in particular on the importance of legal status for the propensity of immigrants to engage in crime. In Section 2.1, we briefly describe the characteristics of the immigrant population in Italy and the evolution of Italian migration policy. Section 2.2 discusses the evidence on immigrants’ involvement in crime in Italy.