Digging deeper in the census data part 5: Ethnical Distribution

Hello and welcome to Open Citizen Data Science!

In our previous post we dealt with jobs and unemployment, which along with education levels showed some strong influence over socio-economic conditions.

Today we will deal with census data about something that has recently become an hot topic in many countries: immigration and how it changes the ethnic make-up of many areas.



In order to start with cleaner data, we will apply some of the previous filters:

- At least one resident in the area
- At least 9 people in the area
- Number of residents >= number of residential buildings
- People per habitative unit <= 12

This might give a slightly less accurate picture in for this particular set of variables as many immigrants might not be registered as residents and some of them might live in extremely cramped conditions but removing the filters proved to give too many outliers (mostly church properties) with improperly reported data.

Let's do a recap of the available variables:

- Stranieri e apolidi residenti in Italia - totale
- Stranieri e apolidi residenti in Italia - età 0 - 29 anni
- Stranieri e apolidi residenti in Italia - età 30 - 54 anni
- Stranieri e apolidi residenti in Italia - età > 54 anni
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - Europa
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - Africa
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - America
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - Asia
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - Oceania
- Apolidi residenti in Italia
- Stranieri residenti in Italia - totale

This set will give us how many foreign residents are in a certain area, plus a rough idea of their age and origin.
Let's start with the percentage of foreign residents and look at the top area by foreign population:

Judging by area and make-up, looks like an office building repurposed as residential

Not the nicest area we've seen but not an outlier.
Let's look at the opposite, the biggest area without foreign residents:

Pretty much a typical post-WWII urban neighbourhood

 Definitely nicer but also not a luxury location either, this building style is pretty typical for post WWII working class buildings.

Let's also see the general distribution:

In average, areas have 7% foreign residents, which is slightly skewed as the median is around 4%.
Areas where natives are the minority are definitely outliers as they are less than 1%.

What about foreign intermixing in residence?

Let's filter areas with at least 1 foreign resident and see see how presence from each continent correlates with each other:

Looks like we have some quick insights:

- Residents from other European countries are less likely to live in areas with foreign presence
- Residents from Africa and Asia are somewhat more likely to reside in areas with foreign presence and there is a minor negative correlation with foreign residents from other continents
- Residents from America are more or less random in correlation with foreign presence in general but there is a minor negative correlation with foreign residents from other continents
- Oceania and undefined (stateless) are likely too rare to have a stastistical correlation

What about the areas where foreign presence is the majority?

There are 1683 areas where over 50% of the population are foreign residents, covering slightly less than 149000 people, 92000 of which are foreign residents.
Interesting enough, when brought to the extremes foreign residents from other european countries tend to have the highest average concentration (almost 38%), followed by Asians (32%) and Africans (24%).

What about the areas with the biggest presence for each continent?

Looks barely legit but we learned that areas with a church might not be 100% accurate

The area with the largest presence of European foreign residents has an overall foreign presence of over 78%, almost 98% of which are European. With over 10 people per unit in average, it's borderline being an outlier, the presence of a church might indicate some residency misreporting.

Also looks barely legit but with an hotel in the building there might be anomalies

The area with the largest presence of African foreign residents has an overall foreign presence of over 58%, with just over half of which are African. With almost 10 people per unit in average, this is also borderline being an outlier, the presence of an hotel might indicate some residence overreporting.

This is more believable

The area with the largest presence of American foreign residents has an overall foreign presence of over 72%, around 37% of which are American. Nothing in the data indicates an outlier in itself aside from the high foreign presence in general.

Huge buildings in the middle of the countryside, not the best example of urban planning

The area with the largest presence of Asian foreign residents has an overall foreign presence of over 92%, around 47% of which are Asian, almost matched by African (46%). Nothing in the data indicates an outlier in itself aside from the high foreign presence in general and definitely pretty far from the Chinatown stereotype.

Nicest area so far

 The area with the largest presence of foreign residents from Oceania has an overall foreign presence of less than 12%, around 44% of which are from Oceania.
Not unexpected and the area in itself is pretty unremarkable statistically.

Despite a church in the area, stats seems normal

 The area with the largest presence of stateless residents has an overall foreign presence of less than 13%, around 21% of which are stateless.
The area in itself is pretty unremarkable statistically but the concentration might be due to the church itself rather than the area.

All in all, some data might have been more explanatory if it was better divided (America and Asia could have used some splits) but it looks like foreign presence alone cannot be used to determine the socio-economic condition of an area.

There might be some relation between poorer conditions with high foreign presence and being relatively far from the more urban areas but it needs further investigation to be proven, especially if religious structures are nearby.

This concludes this article, stay tuned for our next article on residential unit usage!