Irregular crossing (detection)
An entry into the EU outside authorised border crossing points, detected by the authorities and reported to Frontex. The unit is the detection, not the person: someone detected at two different borders (say, in Greece and then at the Hungarian border) is counted twice. Those who enter undetected are not counted at all.
Asylum seeker
A person who has lodged an application for international protection in a country and is awaiting a decision. Not (yet) a refugee: that status is acquired only if the application is granted.
Refugee
Someone granted protection because, under the 1951 Geneva Convention, they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their own country on grounds of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a social group.
Subsidiary protection
Protection granted to those who fall outside the refugee definition but would still face serious harm if returned: death penalty, torture, or threats arising from armed conflict.
Temporary protection
A collective, immediate status created by a 2001 EU directive for mass influxes of displaced people, activated for the first time in 2022 for those fleeing Ukraine. It requires no individual asylum application — which is why its beneficiaries, over four million people, do not appear in asylum statistics.
First-time asylum application
An application lodged by someone seeking asylum for the first time in that country. It is the closest measure to the number of newly arrived people, and the one used in this atlas's main charts.
Repeat application
A further application lodged in the same country by someone who had already lodged one, for example after a rejection. The total (“all applications”) includes repeats, and is therefore always higher than first-time applications.
Regular migration
A change of residence from one country to another as recorded in population registers, whatever the reason: work, study, family, protection. Under the UN definition used by Eurostat it counts those moving their usual residence for at least 12 months — including EU citizens moving between member states and returning nationals.
Net migration
Immigration minus emigration in a given country and year. A positive balance means more people arrived than left; it is the component that most affects population growth or decline in many European countries.
National / third-country national
A “national” holds the citizenship of the reporting country (an Italian in Italy's data); a “third-country national” holds no EU citizenship. Many European statistics split flows along these lines.
Citizenship acquisition (naturalisation)
The granting of a country's citizenship to a foreign resident, through residence, marriage, descent or birth on the territory depending on national law. Requirements vary widely: typically 4 to 10 years of legal residence.
Migratory route
A geographical corridor along which Frontex classifies irregular crossings: Central, Eastern and Western Mediterranean, Western Balkans, Western African (Canaries), Eastern Borders. Routes shift over time, often in response to controls and agreements.
Frontex
The European Border and Coast Guard Agency, based in Warsaw. It collects from member states and publishes monthly detections of irregular crossings at the EU's external borders, by route.
Eurostat
The statistical office of the European Union. It harmonises and publishes the national statistics on asylum, migration and citizenship used in this atlas; codes like migr_asyappctzm identify its tables.
EU-27
The 27 member states of the European Union after the United Kingdom's withdrawal (2020). This atlas's historical series are built on the 27-state aggregate for earlier years too, so they remain comparable over time.
Schengen area
The European space without internal border controls. This is why route-level data stops at the EU entry point: onward movements, say from Italy to Germany, happen inside Schengen and are not tracked by route.
Dublin Regulation
The EU rule determining which member state is responsible for examining an asylum application — broadly, the first country of entry. It explains why a share of applications concentrates in frontline countries, and why applications can recur across countries.
Flow and stock
A flow counts events over a period (how many people arrived in 2024); a stock counts presences at a date (how many foreign residents live in Italy today). This atlas shows flows. Confusing the two is one of the most common errors in public debate.
Partial year
A year for which the sources have published only some months. In the atlas's charts and tables it is marked with an asterisk (*): its lower column does not indicate a real decline, only data not yet complete.
Resettlement
The organised, legal transfer of already-recognised refugees from a country of first asylum (for example a camp in Lebanon) to a country that agrees to receive them. A protected entry channel, small in numbers, that bypasses irregular routes.
AIRE (Italy)
Italy's registry of citizens residing abroad. Italians leaving for more than 12 months are supposed to register, but many do not — which is why measured Italian emigration is almost certainly an undercount.