Filipinos form the sixth largest foreign population group in Italy, behind Romania (796,477), Albania (441,396), Morocco (403,592), China (170,265), and Ukraine (153,998).

Females outnumber males (66,080 versus 47,606), ISTAT data show. But among the 12 countries of origin that have the most numbers of migrants in Italy, the Filipinos have biggest percentage (79.6% or an estimated 90,267) of migrants living in capital cities, or capoluoghi. Among the renowned capital cities are Milan and the Italian capital of Rome.

Milan, considered Italy’s financial capital, hosts 28,735 Filipinos according to ISTAT’s 2008 data, while Filipinos in Rome number to 25,323. Other Italian cities with visible numbers of Filipinos are Bologna (4,068), Firenze (3,668), and Torino (2,713).

The rest of the Filipinos in Italy (20.4 percent or an estimate of 23,419) live in the country’s altri comuni or other communities.

Italy is the second-biggest destination country of Filipinos in Europe (behind the United Kingdom) if one looks at the Philippine government’s 2007 stock estimates of overseas Filipinos.

Covering both documented and irregular or undocumented migrants, data from the Commission on Filipinos Overseas (CFO) showed that there are 82,594 temporary migrants, 24,598 permanent migrants, and an estimated 13,000 undocumented migrants in Italy as of 2007.

CFO gets its estimates using data from host countries’ census and immigration registers (such as ISTAT), data that CFO and the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) produce. Likewise, data is also culled from information on Filipinos who registered with the Philippine embassies in consulates –in particular the embassy in Rome and the consulate in Milan.