Social capital and immigrants' labour market performance

This paper analyses the role of social capital on immigrants’ labour market outcomes. We use the “principal component analysis” (PCA) to build an index of social networks and explore its impact on the probability of getting a job and on wage levels using the Households Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) longitudinal survey data. We find a positive effect of social capital on migrants’ employment outcomes and wages, especially for women. Distinguishing employment into blue and white-collar jobs, we find that social capital only affects the probability of getting a white-collar job. These results suggest that promoting opportunities to create social capital has a beneficial effect on migrants’ integration in the host country

Immigration policy and entrepreneurship

This paper analyses the impact of a change in Australia’s immigration policy, introduced in the mid-1990s, on migrants’ probability of becoming entrepreneurs. The policy change consists of stricter entry requirements and restrictions to welfare entitlements. The results indicate that those who entered under more stringent conditions – the second cohort – have a higher probability to become self-employed, than those in the first cohort. We also find significant time and region effects. Contrary to some existing evidence, time spent in Australia positively affects the probability to become self-employed. We discuss the intuitions for the results and their policy implications

Il reclutamento accademico. Una comparazione tra paesi europei: Finlandia, Germania, Italia, Norvegia e Regno Unito

Il paper si basa sui dati della ricerca internazionale "The changing academic profession" e mostra comparativamente le diverse logiche e dinamiche del reclutamento accademico in Italia e in 4 paesi europei

A decade of disruption: the Italian university in the neoliberal era

In the last two decades the Italian university system has witnessed a wide and deep process of change enacted by two waves of reform policies, after a prolonged period of inertia. Those two waves are based on two different kinds of logics:The first wave can be labelled as modernizing reformism, the second one as hyper-reformism. After having briefly discussed the two reform waves, the article focuses on the hyper-reformism phase, characterizing the last decade of reform policies carried out by the centre-right government, and their disruptive effects on system and institutions

Il rapporto organizzazione-ambiente

La dispensa presenta le principali teorie sociologiche dell'organizzazione al cui centro sta il rapporto tra organizzazione e il suo ambiente esterno

Politiche per l'eccellenza e stratificazione nell'istruzione superiore inglese

Il saggio espone i risultati della ricerca sulle politiche per l'eccellenza nella ricerca e nell'insegnamento in Inghilterra e le dinamiche che tali politiche producono sulla struttura del sistema, sulle istituzioni, generando una riconfigurazione e una ristrutturazione del campo universitario

La ricerca universitaria è un lusso?

Il saggio analizza criticamente le politiche per la ricerca e il suo finanziamento implementate in Italia nella prima decade degli anni 2000, operando un raffronto comparativo con altri Paesi europei. Viene inoltre mostrato sulla base di dati comparativi come la ricerca italiana non sia affatto limitata e di qualità scadente ma, al contrario, come essa sia una delle più prolifiche al mondo nonostante lo scarso finanziamento e sostegno politico

Reform and organizational change in Italian universities

No abstractStarting from 1996, the Italian higher education system has been affected by a process of deep institutional and organizational change triggered by the reform enacted by the former center-left government. The reform is changing the university’s main facets and arrangements: from its structure of governance, to its goals and its way of achieving them. These changes are interpreted as a shift toward the post-Fordist university. This article focuses on the organizational changes and the effects that such a process entails. In particular, three organizational dimensions are considered, namely, the structures, the organizational culture and roles and activities. Finally, an initial assessment of the nature of the occurring changes is provided, in the context of discussing whether they constitute a paradigm shift, a cosmetic change or an adaptation process

A Dominated Discipline in the Italian Academy

Sociology is one of the latecomer disciplines in the Italian academy. Its recognition and institutionalization, within the academic field and at the societal level, cannot yet be considered fully established. Consequently, even today, sociology occupies a dominated position in the academic field. Working from a Bourdieusian perspective, this essay describes the state of the discipline in the 2000s, using official data regarding the number of tenured academics, study courses, and departments as indicators of sociology’s relatively low degree of institutionalization, its dominated position, and its limited power within the Italian academic field