Cuando la Generación Erasmus se encuentra con la Generación Precaria. La movilidad transnacional de los jóvenes italianos y españoles

Uno dei più importanti risultati del processo di integrazione europea è la costruzione di uno spazio transnazionale in cui i cittadini europei possono muoversi liberamente. La mobilità favorisce dinamiche di europeizzazione dal basso –o di europeizzazione orizzontale–, e lo sviluppo di pratiche cross-nazionali e amplia le risorse individuali e relazionali a disposizione dei giovani per progettare i propri percorsi professionali e di vita. La Generazione Erasmus definisce giovani socializzati a un humus culturale transnazionale e fortemente identificati con l’Europa. Nell’attuale contesto di crisi economica, a sperimentare la mobilità sono sempre più i giovani altamente qualificati dei paesi dell’Europa del sud, quale strategia individuale cui ricorrere per trovare risposta ai problemi connessi alla precarietà, alla disoccupazione, alla sotto-qualificazione degli impieghi. Il risultato è che la mobilità può assumere il volto di un obbligo, più che di una scelta e, più che dinamiche di europeizzazione orizzontale, può favorire una “fuga dei cervelli” dai paesi del sud ai paesi del centro e del nord Europa. L’articolo, focalizzandosi sui giovani italiani e spagnoli, si chiede cosa succede quando la Generazione Erasmus incontra la Generazione Precaria, analizzando cause ed effetti della mobilità, sul piano micro e macro sociale e sul piano politico.One of the main achievement of the European integration process is the making of a transnational space where European citizens can freely circulate. Mobility promotes a kind of bottom-up, or horizontal europeanization, and the spread of cross-national practices. It also contributes to a widening in the individual and relational resources available to youth to carry out their professional and personal life projects. The so called Erasmus Generation, defines young peoples socialized to a transnational cultural humus and highly identified with Europe. Indeed, in the current context of economic crisis, mobility is more and more experienced by highly skilled youth from Southern European countries, as individual strategies to deal with precariousness, unemployments, under-qualified jobs. As a result, mobility can be seen as an obligation, more than a choice, and as a form of brain drain from Southern to Central and Northern European countries, more that a carrier of horizontal europeanization. The article, focusing on Italian and Spanish youth, explore the interconnection between Erasmus Generation and Precarious Generation, and analyzes causes and effect of transnational mobility experienced by highly skilled youth, on the micro and macro social level and on the political level

Social enterprise in Spain and Italy during the crisis. A laboratory for economic and social innovation?

En este artículo analizamos el desarrollo de empresa social en España e Italia en el marco de la crisis económica y social, en términos de difusión y marco jurídico. De esta manera, definimos los confines del “ecosistema” de la empresa social en los dos países e identificamos elementos comunes y especifidades. La hipótesis es que la empresa social representa una herramienta de generación de respuestas proactivas a la crisis, impulsando trayectorias de innovación económica y social, y contribuyendo a un modelo de desarrollo económica y socialmente sostenible. La innovación surge de la capacidad de las empresas sociales de generar respuestas innovativas a demandas emergentes, de su capacidad de crear al mismo tiempo valor social y económico, de satisfacer necesidades individuales y colectivas, de activar dinámicas de cambio de medio y largo plazo, de estimular dinámicas de emprendimiento, de empoderamiento y de valorización en el territorio. Sin embargo, el carácter innovador de la empresa social no surge simplemente de una empresarializacción del Tercer Sector tradicional, y mucho menos como consecuencia de la transferencia de servicios fundamentales del estado a asociaciones, cooperativas y empresas sociales, si con eso se persigue el simple objetivo de reducción de los gastos públicos. Al contrario, detrás de la retórica de la innovación social se puedan esconder proyectos de reducción de los gastos de servicios a través de la reducción de los salarios y de la cualidad de los servicios. El artículo, a partir de la comparación de la difusión del fenómeno y de las perspectivas de desarrollo en España y en Italia, termina con una reflexión crítica sobre las luces y sombras, los riesgos y las oportunidades, relacionados con la difusión de la empresa social, o sea, de la integración de la acción solidaria y la acción económica en prácticas que son al mismo tiempo empresariales y con finalidades sociales.The contribution explores the development of social enterprises in Spain and Italy in the framework of the economic and social crisis. Comparing the spread of the phenomena and its legal framework, we define the boundaries of the "ecosystem" of social enterprises in the two countries, identifying commonalities and specificities. The hypothesis is that the social enterprise represents a proactive tool for generating responses to the crisis, promoting economic and social trajectories of innovation and contributing to a sustainable development model. Innovation comes from the power of social enterprises to generate innovative responses to emerging demands and from the ability to create both social and economic value, to meet individual and collective spheres, enabling paths of change in the medium and in the long term and promoting the empowerment processes in the local dimension. Yet, the innovative character of the social enterprise does not merely arise from the externalization of social services from the public to the third sector, in order to reduce public expenditure. Instead, behind the rhetoric of social innovation it can hide projects to reduce public service through cutting down on wages and the quality of services. The article compares the presence and prospects of development of the phenomenon in Italy and Spain and, finally, offers a critical reflection on the risks and opportunities related to the spread of the social enterprise, as it is characterized by a novel integration between solidarity action and economic action, in entrepreneurial practices serving a social purpose

The Ri-elaboration of the Collective Sphere. New Paths of Sociality and Groups-Formation among the New Generations

Goal of the article is to contribute to the understanding of the reinvention of politics in young generations moving from an in depth sociological examination of the change occurring in the structure of society and in its self-definition. The objective is to grasp the ambiguity and the ambivalence characterizing the ongoing scenery of change. To carry out this analysis, we will refer to Simmel’s seminar theory of society as a network of relations and, along this line, to the contributions of authors such as Beck, Giddens, Touraine, Melucci, Castells, on the development of the late modernity and the network society. The hy-pothesis we follow is that the younger generations present multiple and original synthesis between sub-jectivity and the collective dimension. The emergence of reticular and fluid relations among individuals fosters the process of individualization and the same reinvention of the nature of social ties. We frame the qualitative transformation of the concept of "group" and "collective" as the culmination of a process of individuation, which does not entail a disappearance of intermediate groups, but that multiplies and radically alters their structure. Groups are more and more fluid and their borders porous. Individuals are no longer defined by their belonging to groups, as the same belonging to groups becomes a contingent and a negotiated ac

Youth and the Reinvention of Politics. New Forms of Participation in the Age of Individualization and Presentification

According to mainstream theory, citizens and among them young people in particular are disenchanted and increasingly skeptical of representative democracy and traditional political organization. Indeed, the decline in conventional participation is accompanied by a process of the reinvention of politics, characterized by the spread of unconventional participation and innovative approaches and repertoires of action. New practices configure themselves as informal, non-institutionalized, horizontal, increasingly di-vorced from traditional collective social cleavages, but personally meaningful and individually oriented. Finally, politics also divorced from long terms projects, as the future folds back into the present, it is ab-sorbed within it and it is consumed before it can really be conceived. The present appears as the only di-mension available for the definition of choices, a fully-fledged existential horizon which includes and sub-stitutes the future and the past. The acceleration of social life and its various times renders these two di-mensions ever more evanescent as reference points for political action. Yet despite all of this, individuali-zation and presentification do not equate with depoliticization. In a con-text shaped by the privatization of social and political experience and by a presentification of life-projects, the new forms of mobilization protagonized by youth can be analyzed as the search for a collective project by means of articulating and integrating diversity – as well as a way to express a deep form of indignation. In this monographic issue of Partecipazione e Conflitto we have recollected contribution which analyze the reinvention of participation – in direction of an alter-activism - in the age of individualization and presentification,

Book Symposium/ Everyday Europe: Social transnationalism in an unsettled continent

For Symposium sbstract is not require

Introduction. A practice of sociological reflection beyond national frames

La crisis que comienza en 2008, y que todavía sigue produciendo sus efectos en Europa, y de manera particular en Italia y España, ha proporcionado el contexto ideal para llevar a cabo una comparación entre las dinámicas de cambio que se han desarrollado en los dos países. Dentro del contexto europeo, España e Italia comparten muchos rasgos comunes y los efectos de la crisis económica en las dimensiones cultural, social y política. La crisis en Italia y en España, al igual que en Grecia y Portugal, ha sido particularmente aguda. Ha golpeado de manera fuerte el sistema económico, generando una caída de la producción y un aumento del desempleo y de la precarización. Se ha reflejado en una serie de recortes que han golpeado a un Estado de Bienestar ya históricamente débil. Ha amplificado las incertidumbres y los riesgos típicos de la tardo-modernidad, así como los procesos de individualización. La crisis económica es a la vez una crisis política, social y cultural, cuyas raíces, así como sus remedios, son consustanciales al modelo neoliberal. La idea de poner en marcha un proyecto comparativo se ha desarrollado a partir de la intuición de que, a pesar de la presencia manifiesta de muchos elementos comunes en los dos países, la crisis, en algunos aspectos, produce dinámicas diferenciadas, sobre todo en la dimensión política. El método comparativo, desde nuestro punto de vista, favorece un planteamiento reflexivo. La comprensión de las dinámicas que se han desarrollado en un país invita a reflexionar críticamente sobre los factores que en el otro país han llevado a dinámicas diferentes, forzando al científico social a no conformarse con las claves explicativas consolidadas, a desarrollar explicaciones multidimensionales, a establecer conexiones y a intentar averiguar de qué manera las dinámicas de cambio global, favorecidas por los procesos de globalización y de europeización, interactúan con variables de contexto y factores específicos. Lo que la comparación nos dice es que, a pesar de los elementos comunes, entre los dos países hay diferencias, tanto en términos de intensidad y de etapas de la crisis, como en términos de respuesta social y política a la crisis.The crisis that began in 2008, and still continues to produce its effects in Europe, and in particular in Italy and Spain, has provided the ideal context to carry out a comparison between the dynamics of change characterizing the two countries. Within the European context, Spain and Italy share many common characteristics. They also share the cultural, social and political effects of economic crisis. The crisis in Italy and Spain, as well in Greece and Portugal, has been particularly harsh. It has strongly affected the economic system, generating a fall in production and contributing to a sharp increase of unemployment and precariousness. As a consequence of crisis, expenditures in welfare state are cut. The crisis amplifies uncertainties and risks typical of late-modernity and exacerbates the processes of individualization. The economic crisis turns into a political, social and cultural crisis. Both roots and remedies to crisis turned to be endogenous to the neoliberal model. The idea of launching a wide comparative analysis project has been developed from the intuition that, despite Italy and Spain share many characteristics, the crisis, in some respects, produces different dynamics, especially in the political dimension. The comparative method, in our view, favors a reflexive exercise. Understanding the dynamics developed in a country invites to develop a critical reflection on the factors that in the other country have led to different dynamics, forcing the social scientist not to conform with pre-existing explications. Social scientists are called to develop multidimensional explanations, to establish connections, in order to find out how the dynamics of global change interact with contextual-endogenous variables. As a result of the comparison between Italy and Spain, we find out that, despite the commonalities between both countries, intensity and evolution of crisis is different, as well as its political and social responses

The rielaboration of the collective sphere: New paths of sociality and groups-formation among the new generations

Goal of the article is to contribute to the understanding of the reinvention of politics in young generations moving from an in depth sociological examination of the change occurring in the structure of society and in its self-definition. The objective is to grasp the ambiguity and the ambivalence characterizing the ongoing scenery of change. To carry out this analysis, we will refer to Simmel's seminar theory of society as a network of relations and, along this line, to the contributions of authors such as Beck, Giddens, Touraine, Melucci, Castells, on the development of the late modernity and the network society. The hypothesis we follow is that the younger generations present multiple and original synthesis between subjectivity and the collective dimension. The emergence of reticular and fluid relations among individuals fosters the process of individualization and the same reinvention of the nature of social ties. We frame the qualitative transformation of the concept of "group" and "collective" as the culmination of a process of individuation, which does not entail a disappearance of intermediate groups, but that multiplies and radically alters their structure. Groups are more and more fluid and their borders porous. Individuals are no longer defined by their belonging to groups, as the same belonging to groups becomes a contingent and a negotiated act

La democrazia in mutamento

«European democracy doesn't need national heroes, ready to die for their homeland, but critical, active citizens who together develop and build the model of society we want to live in.» European integration represents an extraordinary political experiment, which calls for a critical review of the tools and the lexicon traditionally used by sociology to analyse democracy. In this study the risks and opportunities of the passage from the nation-State to transnationality and original institutional structures, such as the system of multilevel governance, are discussed in the light of a wide-ranging analysis of the transformations of the social bond and of political cultures. With reference to the principles of deliberative and cosmopolitan democracy, focus is then placed in particular on the dynamics of democratic self-construction from the grassroots of European society, which develop from the construction of a transnational public sphere

Le nuove generazioni e il Sessantotto. Tra mito e contro-mito

Sixty-eight is a complex, multi-faceted, ambiguous movement which nevertheless had a strong generational dimension. Starting from this assumption, the article reconstructs the characteristics of the movement and explores its protagonists and its different souls. We critically investigate the consequences of the movement on the cultural, social, political and economic level. The goal is to analyze the relations between the values of the Sixty-eight and the new generations. In order to do this, we investigate the specific features of the Italian Sixty-eight and how it changed the Italian society. More generally, we propose a critical reflection on the link between the diffusion of the values of the Sixty-eight and economic, social and political change. In particular, we explore two critical reading. The first one is Inglehart\u2019s theory of the spread - and perhaps decline - of postmaterialist values and the transformations of politics. The second one is Boltanski and Chiapello\u2019s theory about the raise of the \u201cnew spirit of capitalism\u201d, in strict connection with the anti-authoritarian value orientation expressed by the Sixty-eight. In conclusion, we try to outline \u201caffinities and divergences\u201d between the political and social context of Sixty-eight and the contemporary context and to understand how today the new generations, in the context of profound change, contribute to the reinvention of politics

Labor in the time of digital economy. Labor transformations in the context of cognitive capitalism and the platform economy

Il contributo ha come oggetto le trasformazioni del lavoro nel contesto del capitalismo cognitivo e dell’economia delle piattaforme. Si evidenziano rischi e opportunità connessi a questa trasformazione e se ne indaga criticamente il “lato oscuro”. I giovani sono socializzati a una nuova etica del lavoro. Vivono una esperienza di lavoro individualizzata, frammentata e destandardizzata. Esperiscono il superamento dei confini tra tempo di lavoro e tempo di non lavoro, così come dei confini tradizionalmente posti tra lavoro, formazione, impegno sociale e tempo libero. Le nuove forme organizzative e la nuova ética del lavoro trovano espressione in una pluralità di pratiche e di nuovi ambiti lavorativi, dando espressione a pratiche innovative ma anche generando il rischio di nuove forme di sfruttamento e di alienazione. Le prime sono solitamente associate allo sviluppo di pratiche come l’economia collaborativa e l’impresa sociale, mentre i rischi accompagnano lo sviluppo della cosiddetta GIG Economy.The contribution concerns the transformations of work in the context of cognitive capitalism and the platform economy. The risks and opportunities associated with this transformation are highlighted and the "dark side" is critically investigated. Young people are socialized to a new work ethic. They live an individualized, fragmented and de-standardized work experience. They experience overcoming the boundaries between work time and non-work time, as well as the boundaries traditionally placed between work, training, social engagement and leisure. The new organizational forms and the new work ethic find expression in a plurality of practices and new working environments, giving expression to innovative practices but also generating the risk of new forms of exploitation and alienation. The former are usually associated with the development of practices such as collaborative economics and social enterprise, while risks accompany the development of the so-called GIG Economy