Couverture FE-147 Italie : réformes politiques et permanences sociétales des relations formation-emploi
Formation Emploi (in English), n° 147, November 2019, 169 p.

Italy: political reforms and societal continuities in the links between education and employment

Published on
7 November 2019

The past 20 years have seen numerous reforms in Italy, which has turned the country into a testing ground for changes in employment policies. This new issue of “Formation Emploi” is given over to an analysis of the Italian labour market reforms, from policies designed to combat early school leaving to apprenticeships via the education-to-work transition for university graduates. Four key points emerge from the analysis: 1/ the strength of regional disparities; 2/ the ambivalent role of public institutions; 3/ the impact of activation policies and 4/ the importance of instruments of public action.

Italy’s graduate labour market: possible economic recovery and structural challenges

Silvia Ghiselli

‪This paper focuses on the most recent trends in Italy’s graduate labour market, highlighting the effects of the global crisis. Firstly, we walk readers through the reforms that have characterised the Italian university system and the domestic labour market over the last 20 years. Secondly, we analyse graduates’ employment outcomes, one and five years after graduation, including some in-depth analysis on the elements that offer better employment opportunities and salaries to graduates when they enter the labour market : this analysis is made possible thanks to the annual surveys performed by AlmaLaurea, the Consortium that represents about 90 % of Italy’s graduates.‪

 

Italian employment policies : management of professional transitions ensured by partial unemployment

Mara Bisignano

‪This article aims to characterise the ins and outs of the transformations that have marked Italian public action in terms of the management of professional discontinuities. More generally, it is a question of apprehending them by resituating them in the argumentative scheme of labour market reforms. By favouring an entry through the socio-normative arrangements a singular system of partial unemployment, the explicit article on the one hand, the influence of European activation standard – modelled on the treatment of unemployment – and on the other hand, their appropriation by national actors. ‪

 

How to resort to apprenticeship in Italy ? A review of recent reforms and how it has been adopted by the actors

Maël Dif-Pradalier et Samuel Zarka

The lack of commitment of Italian companies in apprenticeship is frequently correlated to its relatively high cost compared to other contractual possibilities. However, one could challenge this oft-invoked explanation : if the competition between employment contracts is so intense, how can one understand resorting to apprenticeship when it takes place ? To address this question, this article starts from an analysis of regulatory texts and statistics concerning apprenticeship in Italy and confronts it with interviews conducted with actors of apprenticeship (regional managers, employers and apprentices). This approach reveals several types of embeddedness in which apprenticeship contracts can make sense : within the compromises of a family business in the North of the country or through the prospect of emigration of a young graduate of a technical institute. Consequently, this article illustrates conditions under which first-time entrants access the labour market.

 

School dispersion and public policies against early school leaving in Italy

Thierry Berthet

This article provides an analysis of early school leaving policies in Italy. After briefly setting the context of the Italian school system, the commonly used notion of dispersion is presented with regard to a conception based on school inclusion as well as the data used to count dropouts, which reveal strong regional differences. As a follow-up of the discussion regarding the continuity of Italian educational policies, the second part of the article devoted to the study of early school leaving public policies. This section, based on a field research in the Lazio region, deals with the setting of the dropout agenda, the structure of public policy aimed at curbing school dispersion and the various instruments used by secondary schools in an everyday effort to promote school perseverance.

 

We are no longer workers, we are fifty-year-old women !

Tania Toffanin

‪In Italy, the labour demand in labour intensive sectors, such as textile, clothing and footwear, has gradually declined due to the effects of the relocation of the low-added value activities in low-wage countries. At the same time, Italian governments have progressively postponed the retirement age but without the implementation of structural interventions in active labour market policies. Consequently, for older women workers with a low level of education, the risk is to remain in a state of income instability until retirement while the amount of their pension will be necessarily reduced. Based on the analysis of fifty interviews carried out with dismissed older women workers, social partners and public officers, we analyse the conditions of these workers and the factors that prevent their integration into the labour market.‪

 

Italy: political reforms and societal continuities in the links between education and employment

The «Documentation française», Formation Emploi, n° 146, 2019/3, 215 p.
Price 25,00 €
Only abstracts are in English, texts are in French.

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Italy: political reforms and societal continuities in the links between education and employment, Formation Emploi (in English), n° 147, 2019, 169 p. https://www.cereq.fr/en/italy-political-reforms-and-societal-continuities-links-between-education-and-employment