Migration and work: the cohesive role of vocational training policies

WP 16/13; Migration and work are truly connected notions, both because one major cause of migration is the search of better working conditions, and because work is a fundamental vehicle of social cohesion, especially for the migrants. Hence, the European social model strongly connects social cohesion and employment policies, fostering sustainable growth and integration by offering increasing job opportunities, particularly concerning the weak categories. Therefore, work is a pillar of active citizenship and a fundamental step in individuals' self-construction and the development of social abilities. In such context, vocational training represents a twofold integration channel, combining both education and work paths. Hence, the European Commission (2010) fosters a cohesive growth through vocational education and training (VET) policies, promoting a modern VET system and increasing its quality and efficiency. In Italy, the role of VET is particularly important for first- and second-generation immigrants, who are more likely to attend VET courses than different education paths. However, Italy is the only European country where VET is perceived like a segregation path, rather than like a port of entry to active citizenship and true integration. In fact, Cedefop (2011) notices that high linguistic barriers and rigid teaching methods characterize the Italian vocational education, while it stresses the high flexibility of Italian vocational training, including an higher adaptability to immigrants' needs. The present work discusses the hypothesis of “subordinate integration” of immigrants into the Italian VET system. In particular, it examines the effectiveness of Piedmont VT policies in fostering employability of weak subjects. The results of a CATI survey on a representative sample of Piedmont VT students suggest no specific discrimination to the detriment of immigrants, whose individual background and work assimilation is similar to that of Italian VT students. Moreover, the net impact evaluation suggests a positive impact of training courses on strangers, which is generally higher for communitarian immigrants. Hence, immigrants' participation to VT courses in Italy seems to denote a sort of normalization strategy of their specific differences, rather than a subordinate integration schem

Tweet-tales: moods of socio-economic crisis?

The widespread adoption of highly interactive social media like Twitter, Facebook and other platforms allow users to communicate moods and opinions to their social network. Those platforms represent an unprecedented source of information about human habits and socio-economic interactions. Several new studies have started to exploit the potential of these big data as fingerprints of economic and social interactions. The present analysis aims at exploring the informative power of indicators derived from social media activity, with the aim to trace some preliminary guidelines to investigate the eventual correspondence between social media indices and available labour market indicators at a territorial level. The study is based on a large dataset of about 4 million Italian-language tweets collected from October 2014 to December 2015, filtered by a set of specific keywords related to the labour market. With techniques from machine learning and user’s geolocalization, we were able to subset the tweets on specific topics in all Italian provinces. The corpus of tweets is then analyzed with linguistic tools and hierarchical clustering analysis. A comparison with traditional economic indicators suggests a strong need for further cleaning procedures, which are then developed in detail. As data from social networks are easy to obtain, this represents a very first attempt to evaluate their informative power in the Italian context, which is of potentially high importance in economic and social research

Evaluating social innovation: results and emerging issues from a random-trial evaluation of a program for the inclusion of migrant adolescents

Working Paper Ircres-CNR 10/2018. This paper presents the experimental evaluation of a pilot program for the educational inclusion of foreign adolescents with low language skills and high dropout risk in junior high school. The intervention aims at filling migrant students’ gaps in both general subject knowledge and character skills. The pilot is jointly developed by a private VET (Vocational Education and Training) center for adolescents in Turin, Italy, and some local junior high schools. During the pilot, treated students attend 290-hour classes at the VET center. VET classes aim at restoring students’ interest in education by professionally-oriented teaching, inductive innovative pedagogical methods, and individual mentorship. The pilot is evaluated through experimental counterfactual design. In the recent past, a similar preliminary project had positive results, but its evaluation was based on qualitative evidence and on teachers’ subjective assessment. Now, a grid of outcome variables is proposed to monitor students in the treated and control groups regarding their educational inclusion and scholastic achievement. The aim is to assess social and behavioral skills, alongside school performance. Previous experimental evaluations of similar programs (see Kautz et al., 2014 for a survey) provide ambiguous results: depending on program features such as length of the treatment, role and pervasiveness of training, tutors, mentors, families’ and peers’ influence, long-term analyses showed either positive (Durlak et al., 2011; Tierney et al., 1995; Orr et al., 1994) or negative (Rodrigues-Planas, 2012) effects on some outcome variables such as behavioral attitudes, character skills, educational attainment, future wages and other labor market outcomes. For this reason, the project adopts a randomized experimental design, so as to get sound evidence on the effectiveness of the implemented activities

Parcours formatifs et entrée dans le marché du travail pour les femmes. Analyse des différences homme-femme dans le cas des politiques de formation en Piémont

WP 13/13; IPublic policies are even more interested in vocational training issues because spillovers fall on the labor market, and then on life quality. Reports of the European Commission registered that women are disadvantaged subjects on the labor market but, at the same time, they are more ambitious and are at their best on the educational side. This paper aims at analyzing data of Piedmont Region on vocational training policies, focusing on the role of women into the labor market. Data refer to subjects that accomplished their training course during 2010 and 2011. Analyses have been performed on interviews, in order to evaluate the effects of training on medium-term employment outcomes of trainees. A control sample has been selected with the aim to evaluate the effect of training, with a special focus on women. Probit models and average marginal effects (AMEs) allow authors to estimate the net impact of training into the labor market. Results suggest that the employment gap between men and women is completely recovered in trainees, but some inequality in labor quality still persit

Vocational training and labour market: inclusion or segregation paths? An integrated approach on immigrant trainees in Piedmont

WP 25/14; Considering the multidimensional nature of employability, which is a latent notion, and its intrinsic connection with education and training policies, this paper uses a mix of quantitative methods to explore the integration of migrants into the Piedmont VET system (North-West Italy), and their subsequent transition into the labour market. In particular, four different approaches are developed: a macro one, investigating gross placement indicators; a micro one, investigating individual scores of integration into the labour market; a multivariate one, estimating a probit model that controls for individual characteristics; and a duration approach, analysing migrants' survival on the labour market. The counterfactual design allows to estimate the net impact of training. Generally, migrants appear to be disadvantaged with respect to EU nationals, but their gap is filled whenever considering foreign trainees. However, the duration analysis does not detect different paths for the treated migrants, but only different paths for migrants on equal integration levels. Hence, data fully confirm the role of Piedmont training policies to contrast and re-cover the disadvantage of target groups which appear weak on the labour marke

Politiche di sostegno al settore agroindustriale in Piemonte: una valutazione controfattuale

Working Paper Ircres-CNR 01/2015. This paper aims at analysing the role played by the Rural Development Programme (RDP) in supporting the Piedmont (Italy) agro-food industry, i.e. that part of the agricultural production chain characterised by the highest added value. This is a first attempt to extend the previous in itinere evaluation to an ex-post quasi experimental counterfactual evaluation of the subsidies’ net impact. Since the agri-food industry is characterised by an extreme variety of firms, and having observed that the treated firms do not share the characteristics of the average population. The counterfactual group has been selected by adopting the coarsened exact matching technique, a quite recent imbalance-reducing matching method. The final results do suggest, above all, a stabilizing effect of the subsidy in a period characterized by a sever worldwide economic crisis. However, since results are quite uncertain, we expect that on-going further research (on the data-base, the model, and balance sheet indicators) will lead to stronger conclusion on the effectiveness of the policy. Nonetheless, this exercise already shows that the selected matching set and methodology, the chosen timing, and the quality of the available data do strongly influence the impact analysis. 

Gender inequalities and labour integration. An integrated approach to vocational training in Piedmont

WP 07/14; Public policies are even more interested in vocational training issues, because spillovers fall on the labour market, and then on life quality. Reports of the European Commission registered that women are disadvantaged subjects on the labour market but, at the same time, they are more ambitious and are at their best on the educational side. This paper aims at analysing data of Piedmont Region on vocational training policies, focusing on the role of women into the labour market. Data refer to subjects that accomplished their training course during 2011. Analyses have been performed on interviews, in order to evaluate the effects of training on medium-term employment outcomes of trainees. A control sample has been selected with the aim to evaluate the effect of training, with a special focus on women. Probit models and average marginal effects (AMEs) allow authors to estimate the net impact of training into the labour market. Results suggest that the employment gap between men and women is completely recovered in trainees, also when considering qualitative aspects of employmen