Remittance behaviours of foreigners in Italy

This paper intends to figure out why immigrants remit, what characteristics they have and, in particular, which of these individual characteristics influence (and in what sense) their propensity to remit. In particular, through the application of an ordinal logistic regression model, it intends to verify the existence of a "time effect" during the migration process. The time effect supposes that the intensity of remittances becomes less consistent as far as the immigrant integrates into the host country and the ties with the country of origin become less intense. In practice, according to this hypothesis, the evolution of the migration plan towards stabilization in the new country, rather than to return home, would lead the migrant to invest more (humanly and economically) in the host country, while reducing his emotional and economical commitment to the family left in the country of origin. We use the 2009 IT-Silc survey "Reddito e condizioni di vita delle famiglie con stranieri" carried on around 6,000 households having at least one foreigner component. This survey provides many details on foreigner's characteristics, remittances attitudes and return plans, and allows us also to consider the composition of the family both in place of origin and of destination.