This essay deals with the commuting patterns of the different foreign groups of residents between the centre and the outer belt of the metropolitan system of the city of Bologna. Over the past decade, there has been a decrease in the number of foreign people living both in the centre (main town) and in the villages located in the first outer belt; this has been counter-balanced by an increase in the foreign population of the further external belt, i.e. in the Northern flatland and Southern hilly and mountainous land of the system. In the latter, about 30% of the foreign population is now made up by young people under the age of 18. The place chosen for settling down is generally related with the person’s particular national group and its peculiarity. Each individual migrant, or group of migrants, may follow one main migratory strategy, but we may as well identify for some groups more than one migratory sector, or pattern. Some newly formed migratory patterns related to groups of migrants who are now entering the productive cycle of the economy are especially interesting and worth analysing.