Cetomedizzazione e nuove polarità

Abstract

Il saggio riflette sull'evoluzione dei ceti medi nell'Italia contemporanea e in particolare sui nuovi fenomeni di pauperizzazione che si riflettono un generalizzato scivolamento verso il basso nella stratificazione sociale. Con il supporto di una analisi empirica dei mutamenti recenti intervenuti nella distribuzione dei redditi, il saggio giunge alla conclusione di un incremento della distanza sociale tra ceti produttivi e redditieri, a fronte di una convergenza nei processi di impoverimento che interessano sia i ceti medi dipendenti, sia quelli imprenditoriali.The crisis shapes societies all over Europe, triggering mobility processes due to general socioeconomic downgrading, as well producing socio-cultural changing, for instance, modifying self class positioning. The article explores such aspects in Italian society, where, almost since the Sixties, the labour market, acting positively as a factor of income redistribution, has been the main economic function underlying the process of "middle-class-ing" of society (De Rita, 1996; Bagnasco, 2003; De Rita and Galdo, 2011), promoting the social encounter between the raising of condition for lower classes and the sliding of the upper classes, more and more focused on consumption and less culturally able to influence the political and institutional decision-making. Nowadays, such "middle-class-ing" trends (interpretable partly as a failure, partly as a renounce of the bourgeoisie to lead as an effective ruling class), have shifted, due to socioeconomic difficulties, to a sort of "working-class-ing" (Diamanti, 2011) interesting an increasing part of the entrepreneurship, where many middle-small business owners feel much closer in terms of social positioning to their employees, workers or craftsmen, because they share with them risks and uncertainty. Nonetheless, especially the working and middle class, more and more less supported by the welfare in the prolonged crisis, are suffering a progressive worsening of socioeconomic conditions. Using datasets from Banca d’Italia, the contribution observe such trends of social mobility since the beginning of the crisis in 2008, observing the evolution in income, property and consumption behaviors from the perspective of the different labour market positions