Italian Scots are people of Italian descent living in Scotland. These terms may refer to people who are born in Scotland and of Italian descent. It can also refer to people of mixed Scottish and Italian ancestry. A recent Italian voter census estimated that there are 70,000 to 100,000 people in Scotland of Italian descent or Italian nationals, which is up to 1.9% of the overall Scottish population. Latest available figures from the 2011 UK Census show there were 6,048 people born in Italy living in Scotland. This was up from 4,936 in 2001 and 3,947 recorded in 1991. In 2016, Ronnie Convery, secretary of the Italian Scotland charitable organisation and director of communications at the Archdiocese of Glasgow, asserted that a completely new dimension was being added to the Scots-Italians community. He said, “There has been a brand new migration over the past two years, and the biggest one we have seen in 100 years." Migration to Scotland from Italy has been predominantly from the provinces of Lucca and Frosinone. Additional provinces with fairly significant emigration to Scotland include Isernia, La Spezia, Pistoia, Parma, Latina, Massa-Carrara and Pordenone. The Scottish Italian community settled mostly in the Glasgow area, most of whom are of Tuscan origin. The smaller Italian community in and around Edinburgh is predominantly of Lazian origin. History Arguably the first people from Italy to reach Scotland were the Romans in and around 40AD, although the modern nations of Italy and Scotland did not exist at the time and of course the Roman Empire was a cosmopolitan institution, with some Roman Emperors from the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa. Still, at least some of the Romans in Scotland were probably from what is now Italy and their constructions in Scotland of the Antonine Wall and other, mostly military installations, provide some insight into the period. No Roman or Romano-Celtic identity appears to have existed in Scotland at this time and it was not until the end of the 19th century that any form of an Italian-Scots identity ever began to take shape. Many Italian-Scots can trace their ancestry back to the 1890s where their forefathers escaped drought, famine and poverty in their homeland for a better life in Scotland; yet it was not until World War I that a sizeable population of Italian-Scots—over 4,000—began to emerge, with Glasgow hosting the third largest community in the United Kingdom. Since