Italian Emigration to London

The object of this paper is an historical-economic analysis of the European demographic dynamics in the XIX century, with particular reference to the Italian emigration to London and the birth of Little Italy. The analysis will focus on the first settlements and on the development of the first Italian community in London and highlights the different sort of skilled and unskilled workers within the economic and social environment, an aspect that arouses great interest in the scientific debate, due to the fear of a depletion of human capital in our country, with its negative consequences on the economy. In both cases the strong sense of identity and belonging to the community helped many commercial activities, set up by skilled workers, to survive over the decades, and allowed the flow of unskilled and poor one to survive, despite having to face extremely difficult daily life conditions.