The failure of “traditional adult goals” for today’s young people: new cohabitations and new coexistences (original) (raw)
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For almost 10 years there has been talk of the economic crisis affecting the European area, with more evident effects in the Mediterranean countries. Yet the expression 'economic crisis' has become too wide and blurred to be useful for describing how the current socioeconomic conjuncture is affecting different categories of young people in different ways. Precariousness and reduced job opportunities, with their consequences for social mobility, constitute only the more explicit and raw evidence of the lived experience of the crisis among young people. Although families remain the all-solving institution, the consequences of the crisis are diversified according to the economic, cultural and social capital of each individual, to gender and generation position, and to subjective and contextualized perceptions. This article presents research conducted to investigate how young people living in the urban area of Milan locate, react, readapt and reinvent themselves in the present economic context by analysing their aspirations, expectations and practices. We develop a comparative analysis of the main structural bias (gender, education, social class position) in order to shed light on the effects and perceptions of the crisis among young people in the city of Milan.
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Social Indicators Research, 2010
For a kind of inertia effect, today the Italian welfare state protects the older too much and, on the contrary, it does not counter sufficiently the new risks associated with other phases of life. Not much seems to be implemented in favour of Italian young people who, as a matter of fact, seem to suffer a lot from the present changes: young people remain longer in the parental home and postpone setting up their own independent life to a most advanced age. In order to understand the situation of vulnerability increasingly widespread among young people, it seemed more and more necessary an in-depth analysis of the reasons and the subjective status of the discomfort that affects young people because of a delayed transition into adulthood. Therefore, we studied the self-perceived vulnerability situation experienced by Italian young people in different spheres of their life. The aim was to understand what is the subjective status that prevents young people from planning an adult life, having a partner and possibly having a child. In particular our analysis tries to bring together theoretical and methodological methods in the measurement of socio-demographic vulnerability concept. In order to do that, we employed the Multiple Correspondence Analysis, using data provided by the Italian Multipurpose Survey, carried out in 2003 and named ''Household and Social Actors''. Keywords Socio-demographic vulnerability Á Risk Á Young people Á Multiple correspondence analysis 1 Introduction People are exposed to a wide set of risks coming from acts of nature or by human action (United Nations 2001). Since the mid-90s a lot of experts (Saraceno 1986; Castel 1997; Ranci 2007, 2004) have pointed out how the nature of social risks has changed. Social risks
Journal of Adult Development, 2014
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In transition … Where to? Rethinking Life Stages and Intergenerational Relations of Italian Youth
Societies, 2019
This article wants to contribute to the ongoing debate within youth studies about the frameworks and concepts that inform research on the meanings of and transitions into adulthood. It aims to contribute to debates about the changing nature of life stages and the need for new conceptual categories and definitions of adulthood and of intergenerational relations. Thus, the first question that drives our reflections is: How do the radical transformations implied in the transition to adulthood pathway change the metaphors used to describe it, the ways of defining adulthood itself, and the scope for mutual recognition amongst different generations? Indeed, intergenerational relationships acquire more complexity in a framework in which a) structural factors like the precarisation of the labour market and the aging population heighten reciprocal interdependence and b) changes in the life-course patterns distance the different generations, especially in terms of biographical sense-making. These theoretical reflections arise from empirical work done in Northern Italy, with thirty-something people who are struggling with a prolonged and de-standardised transition process, negotiating “new adult roles”, particularly in the field of parenthood). This complex transition is significant and widespread in Italian context that, as part of the group of Southern welfare states, has low levels of welfare provision and high reliance on the family as a form of support.
Saving and Cohabitation: the Economic Consequences of Living with One's Parents in Italy
2006
Saving and Cohabitation 415 some Western countries, such as Germany, the UK, or the U.S., where children tend to leave the parental home soon after they become of age or at least complete their education. And yet, there is ample evidence that this is by no means the rule even within Europe. Important studies by demographers have pointed out that the age of leaving home varies dramatically across European countries (Kiernan 1986 and 1999; Fernandez Cordon 1997). In a recent and well-documented study, Billari et al. (2001) estimate that for the ten-year cohort born around 1960, for instance, median ages of leaving home were 22.5 for men and 20.5 for women in the Netherlands (very close to the UK or West Germany), as low as 20.1 for men and 19.8 for women in Lithuania, but much higher in Spain, Poland and particularly Italy (26.7 for men and 23.6 for women in Italy). This variability across countries is not a recent phenomenon, and suggests that institutional or cultural differences may play a lasting role in explaining international differences. An interesting summary on cohabitation in Europe as recently as 1998 is presented in Figure 1, that shows the proportion of households in the European Community Household Panel headed by someone aged 50 or more with at least one child aged 25 or more in residence. This proportion is highest in Portugal, followed by Italy, Ireland, and Spain, and lowest in Denmark, followed by the Netherlands and the UK.1 However, even though in the Netherlands cohabitation of children aged 25+ with their parents is quite rare, the cohabitation of 18-25 is much more common. On the basis of this evidence, it makes sense to study the way cohabitation and saving decisions are taken across different countries but not necessarily to focus on a specific age group: we shall construct our empirical exercise in such a way that the leaving home decision could be taken mostly by children aged 25+ (like in Italy) or 18-25 (like in the Netherlands). Computing saving rates in household level data is difficult. Saving can be defined as income minus expenditure, or as the change in wealth. The two definitions are not even conceptually the same, because income does not normally include capital gains (see Brugiavini and Weber 2003 for a discussion of this and many other issues). But empirically, they are likely to differ for measurement problems too: the flow definition requires finding a survey that contains high quality data on both income and expenditure, the stock-based measure Comment Michael McMahon, London School of Economics, Centre for Economic Performance, and Bank of England Comment 457 2. The negative relationship remains even if the shares are controlled for differences in income per head. 3. The negative relationship in this chart is not statistically significant (regardless of whether income is controlled for). 4. This involves using only the 2001 cross-section, not distinguishing the "leavers" and "stayers," and concentrating on household level data. 5. These data come from Eurostat (2003) and reflect the baseline scenario. 6. The authors kindly provided the data from their study for this chart. 7. We can modify this setup to allow for tax/contribution payments from pension (or one can think about net pension payments).
The impact of the economic crisis on Italian young people’s everyday life
In Italy, the economic crisis of the last years has been characterized by recession, deflation, and unemployment. In addition to its broader effect on society, the crisis has deeply affected Italians’ everyday practices, their views, and their future goals. This is particularly true for young people, who can no longer rely on rising expectations. The paper presents the preliminary results of a qualitative study aimed at understanding how young people perceive and handle their everyday life in a social and working context so heavily influenced by income uncertainty, job insecurity, and a general lack of confidence in the future. Face-to-face in-depth interviews have been conducted in the metropolitan area of Milan (Italy). Keywords: economic crisis; young people; everyday practices.
Similarities and differences between two cohorts of young adults in Italy
Demographic Research, 2006
This paper analyses the results of a CATI survey, consisting of a representative national sample of 3083 young Italian people of two different generations: those aged 23-27 and 33-37 in the first half of 2004. The analysis is targeted particularly at the older cohort and examines the late transition to adulthood and its effect on fertility. Is the situation in Italy converging towards the European one? We also analyse transition processes to all "life course" events as interrelating mechanisms, in which each process is the premise for the next step, but in which they are all probably considered indispensable in choosing to have a child. The results suggest the spread of new family forms among youth, but a persistent delay in family formation.