Abstract
The present work offers a detailed description of the recent European and Italian migration experience. In the last 150 years, Northern Europe first, and Southern European countries later on experienced the transition from emigration to immigration countries, and host today large shares of developing countries' population. By means of official data, we describe demographic and socio-economic characteristics of the migrant population both in the European Union as a whole, and in Italy and we give some insights regarding the effects the recent crisis had on the conditions of the immigrant population.