Italian PhD students at the borders: the relationship between family background and international mobility

Abstract Previous literature has suggested that PhD students’ mobility has become a fundamental step during doctoral studies, both for training purposes and for creating transnational research networks. In recent years, there has been a significant increase in migration of highly educated and highly skilled Italians. Most studies concentrate on employment-related characteristics of researchers’ and scientists’ mobility, largely neglecting other topics, such as family background characteristics of those who decide to study and go abroad. Using the Istat Survey on occupational conditions of PhD holders conducted in 2014 and 2018 in Italy, along with modelling using multinomial logistic regression analyses, we aim to investigate the relationship between family background characteristics and mobility during PhD studies according to different types of international stay. Our results show that both parental education and mother’s economic activity are related to the propensity for studying abroad among PhD candidates, whereas father’s social class seems to have a lower impact on this decision. The gap in doctoral mobility among PhD students with respect to socio-economic status seems also to vary according to the different types of stay abroad. Overall, our findings intend to shed light on potential disparities related to studying abroad among PhD students and their links to family background, which may have future repercussions on students’ occupational prospects

Diverse pathways in young Italians’ entrance into sexual life: The association with gender and birth cohort

BACKGROUND Sexual development is a complex process, the study of which should consider not only first sexual intercourse but also multiple behavioural trajectories in a comprehensive perspective. Moreover, first romantic relationships and sexual experimentation during adolescence form the building blocks for subsequent more mature relationships and sexual behaviours later in life. OBJECTIVE This study focuses on young Italians’ first romantic and sexual experiences, with a twofold aim. We seek to both describe the trajectories characterising the first stages of youths’ affective and sexual development and to study the differences among them by gender and birth cohort. METHODS Applying sequence analysis and subsequent cluster analysis to a sample taken from two surveys conducted in 2000–2001 and 2017 on Italian university students, we identify young people’s affective and sexual development trajectories. This is followed by a multinomial logistic regression analysis to discern the effect of gender and birth cohort on the probability of belonging to a given pathway. RESULTS We identify six distinct sexual ideal types among young men and women, with gender differences that characterise the trajectories of affective and sexual development of most university students. That said, our results also suggest that differences between the two genders have narrowed over time. CONTRIBUTION The findings confirm the importance of not only considering first sexual intercourse and the ‘typical’ trajectory of affective and sexual development but also accounting for diverse trajectories so as to accurately capture the complexity of youths’ early romantic and sexual live