The thesis examines the process of transition from education to employment in comparative perspective. More specifically, it investigates how market and educational institutions influence the school-to-work transition processes in the European context. A comparative perspective is adopted, in order to disentangle theoretically – by means of examples – and parametrically – by means of statistical modelling – the institutional influence on the first stages of occupational careers of young school leavers. In order to provide a comprehensive view of the school-to-work transition, the thesis focuses on both the process of entry into the first employment and the occupational progression beyond that point, with a particular emphasis on the emergence of social inequalities in the early career stages.

This dissertation investigates the differentiation of migrants’ entrepreneurial performances in the restaurant sector. By adopting a biographical approach, this study analyses five main dimensions and their combinations in shaping performances: the context in which migrant entrepreneurs operate, the different businesses’ characteristics and strategies, migrants’ reliance on networks, their implementation of human capital, the individuals’ life trajectories, their classes of origin, and paths of upward (and eventually downward) social mobility. This study is based on 50 biographical interviews conducted in the two most important cities in Italy: Milan and Rome. In order to better understand the differentiation of performances, the sample includes entrepreneurs who reach good performances, those who manage to survive, and those who are in crisis. The findings evidence the intersection between networks, human capital, motivation, projects, and experiences of migrant entrepreneurs. These elements implement themselves, by creating a virtuous cycle, as far as successful cases are concerned. However, when these elements do not foster each other, migrant entrepreneurs tend to face many difficulties in conducting their businesses. This study also emphasises how economic performance and social mobility are not always interrelated, and some counterintuitive results emerge. On the one hand, it is underlined the importance of shelter enterprises, that do not have good business performances but can play a relevant social role in fostering upward social mobility for those entrepreneurs who come from lower classes of origin. On the other hand, good business performances are not always connected to the entrepreneurs’ upward mobility, which is often barely maintained and, in some cases, even declined.

The present thesis analyses the role of household in producing and reproducing inequality in contemporary societies. While individual and macro level factors influencing economic inequality have been widely investigated, meso level factors have received much less attention so far. This thesis, thus, investigates how the employment behaviour of individuals and their sorting into households, and their dynamics in time and space contribute to deepen inequality. Firstly, it contributes to the still open debate on the consequences of changes in households for economic inequality focusing on four European countries and the United States over two decades. Increases in single-headed households, in female labour market participation, and in the employment and earnings similarity of partners are changes of primary interests for economic inequality. In addition, the thesis investigates how market, state, and family produce and redistribute economic resources and shape the distribution of income and its stratification across household types. Secondly, the thesis moves then towards a dynamic perspective and merges three different lines of research: the life course research, stratification research, and comparative research. It does so studying how life course events affect income trajectories of different social groups in different countries/contexts. Specifically, this thesis investigates the consequences of job loss across different social strata. The idea is that social risks may strengthen or weaken social stratification if risks, and their consequences, are unevenly distributed across social groups. Finally, these aspects are investigated for two countries, Germany and the United States, characterized by relevant variations in those institutions – the market, family and welfare state – which have the capacity to affect the risk of experiencing job loss, and to buffer its economic consequences.

There is an on-going debate on the effects of participatory development interventions; some scholars claim that participation is the key driver of change while others show that these interventions are vulnerable to unintended consequences and often only empower the already leading elites. The Brazilian agrarian reform created a large migration flow into villages inside sugar cane plantations (engenhos) that became agrarian reform settlements (assentamentos). The main novelties in assentamentos are the presence of households with heterogeneous background and free use of land. The main question is whether the agrarian reform and producers’ cooperatives supported the emergence in assentamentos of new forms of social organization. This research argues that that impact of development intervention is not only related to participants but to the entire target social structure. Applying theory of adaptiveness, the main hypothesis is that the capacity of assentamentos to respond to the changes promoted by these external interventions depends on the level of overlap between multiple social networks that define the social structure of assentamentos. This research explores qualitatively and quantitatively the network formation of three assentamentos in Northeast Brazil. Furthermore it analyzes how one cooperative supporting family farming influences and it is influenced by the social network structure. The agrarian reform and the creation of a producers’ cooperative can be considered as participatory interventions, as they were community driven. The unit of analysis is the household. Households are the nodes in the network. Villages are considered as social relational systems. The analysis focuses on the study of multiple networks that connect households in each village. By analyzing three agrarian reform settlements that were created by three different social movements, the research shows that different households’ recruitment strategies and different villages’ histories led to different village composition and social processes behind network formation. Family farming plays a crucial role in allowing for the possibility to create new rural villages that differ from previous sugar cane plantation production units. The possibility of family farming to become a relevant livelihood strategy is associated with the features of villages’ social networks. The producers’ cooperative, supporting the introduction of new labor-intensive crops and guaranteeing a market for some crops, sustains family farming employment network. However the brokering role of the cooperative is hampered by the cooperative political positioning and by the path of specialization towards high value and labor-intensive crops.

The present thesis investigates the complex relationships between production technologies, labour markets, and institutional arrangements. Historically, technological developments have played a crucial role in explaining socioeconomic transformations, and social scientists have developed several theoretical approaches to understand the link between production technologies and labour markets. However, many of these perspectives are grounded on technology-centred views that overemphasise the technical capabilities of machinery while discounting the crucial role of social contexts in channelling and diverting the implications of automation. This thesis stresses and supports the idea that technological change is not a relentless process driven solely by the characteristics of the technology adopted but rather that automation processes are embedded in historically defined institutional arrangements. Although this broad objective guides all the sections of this dissertation, each chapter brings a contribution of its own. The first chapter reviews the main theories on the relationship between technological change and the labour markets of the last decades, and advances a theoretical approach to the embeddedness of technological change in institutional systems. The second chapter investigates the heterogenous relation between industrial automation and occupational and class structures across different institutional arrangements. The third chapter focuses on technology, unionisation, and their relationships with the earnings of different social classes in the US from the early 1980s to our day. The fourth chapter investigates the relationship between computers, skills, and job satisfaction in Germany and the UK. Finally, the last chapter summarises the key findings and discusses the main issues and expectations concerning the most recent wave of technological development and how insights from this thesis are relevant in building expectations regarding the future of work.

The research lies at the intersection of two large social research areas—highly skilled migration and return migration—and aims to provide a contribution to the studies of sending countries by focusing on post-return experiences of highly skilled professionals in the Belarusian context. Thus, I explore public attitudes toward migration issues in Belarus; investigate the dynamics of return migration among highly skilled migrants; analyse the complexities of highly skilled people’s lifestyles; and study in which ways they apply socio-cultural remittances to different spheres of their lives. Among the main results of this research are the following. This study has conceptualised return in relation to the transnational involvement of returnees, by introducing the concepts of ‘locally oriented’- and ‘transnationally oriented style of life’. These ideal types of post-return lifestyle differ in degree of mobility, attitudes toward home, consumption practices, and type of employment. International experience of living abroad seems to have had a substantial effect on individual styles of life in terms of transnational orientation. However, it appears to be quite heterogeneous and has evident gender differences in its manifestations. Moreover, I argue that formation and transmission of socio-cultural remittances are strongly heterogeneous and selective processes, which manifest themselves to varying degrees not only in different people, but also in different aspects of people’s lives. The analysis of several socio-cultural remittances in private and public spheres showed that under certain conditions, the formation of ‘reactive’ socio-cultural remittances occurred. What is more, in some cases the socio-cultural remittances appeared to have strong gender differences. The results draw on qualitative content analysis of three online discussions (almost 19 thousand posts) and 43 in-depth interviews with highly skilled Belarusian returnees.

The present dissertation examines whether the heterogeneity of co-residence experiences and the nest-leaving process have consequences for later parent-adult child relationships in Italy and Sweden. Three aspects of intergenerational linkages are analyzed: residential proximity, the frequency of parent-child contact, and the downward flow of economic resources from parents to their adult children. By devoting particular attention to these three dimensions of intergenerational solidarity, the first chapter presents an overview of the literature on parent-adult child relationships and describes long-standing cultural differences between Italy and Sweden. In the second chapter, I ask whether in Italy the time spent in the parental home promotes the frequency of contacts between generations, and whether violating social norms regarding the socially accepted time for leaving home is related to less frequent interactions with parents in later life. The findings show that the longer the time adult children spent in their parents’ home, the higher the propensity to reside near, and maintain frequent interaction with parents in later life is. In addition, spending longer time in the parental home appears to provide much less benefit for Italian daughters than for sons. Age norms appear to prescribe the socially accepted ‘age deadline’ for fulfilling expectations for normal adult development. Considering the reasons for leaving home, marriage continues to be the normative occasion to leave the parental family, particularly among adult daughters, who are subject to greater cultural expectations about family ties. The third chapter devotes particular attention to union dissolution and family conflict during childhood and adolescence as possible mechanisms behind the relationship between nest-leaving processes and later parent-child relationships. The findings reveal that the duration of co-residence is likely to foster family interactions also in Sweden, and this positive relationship is only marginally explained by childhood family experiences. However, late home leavers tend to maintain frequent contacts with parents in part owing to having moved shorter geographical distances, and this is more evident for adult daughters than for sons. In addition, adult daughters who stay at home for longer have more opportunities to form binding relationships with mothers than with fathers. The fourth study aims to extend the findings of the previous two chapters, by analyzing intergenerational financial transfers and using a within-family approach (or a sibling design). The findings show that in Italy and other southern European countries late home leavers are more likely to receive economic support from their parents, compared to their siblings who move out of the family nest at an earlier age. But this effect is completely mediated by the time since leaving the parental home, indicating that parents tend to facilitate the transition to independence of their young adult children. The last chapter discusses the findings in the light of previous research. The results of the present dissertation supports the idea that family members’ life courses are deeply interconnected, and that previous family history has important long-term consequences for later intergenerational relationships. I provide new insights into how co-residence experiences and events in early adulthood shape later family relations throughout the life course.

The dissertation investigates couples’ gender inequality in paid and unpaid work as well as in earnings, especially as this inequality relates to parenthood with a cross-national focus. The different behavior of partnered women and men in the three areas is investigated in different institutional circumstances, focusing on if and how individual and household characteristics are related to within-household gender inequality; then, the extent to which the presence of children is associated with less gender equality in women and men's participation in the work force, division of domestic chores, and relative earnings capacity is investigated; further, I consider how individuals embedded in different contextual and institutional circumstances - in particular referring to welfare regimes, but not only – behave differently in the three areas and whether the contextual traits have a mediating effect on the relation between individual characteristics and women and men's behavior in paid work, unpaid work and relative earning capacity in the presence of children or in the event of a childbirth. The thesis is made up by six chapters; the first is devoted to a discussion of welfare and gender regimes that are referred to extensively in the literature review and in the empirical chapters. Then I review the main findings in the literature regarding gender differences in paid work, domestic chores and earnings, and their relation with parenthood. From these I draw my hypotheses. In chapter two, I introduce the data and the methods, although a discussion of these is also included in each empirical chapter. Chapters three to five report the analyses and the findings: in chapter three I analyze the relation between paid work and parenthood in four European countries; in chapter four, multi-level models are applied to 23 European states to investigate to what extent the presence of children is associated with the division of domestic chores within couples, and whether the association varies by country; in chapter five, I use multi-level models first and fixed effects panel models afterwards using data from 26 European countries to test, firstly, the association between parenthood and relative earnings of couples, and secondly the effect of child birth on the earnings' balance of couples. Finally, in chapter six I draw some concluding remarks on my findings. Arguing that gender inequality is rooted in households, the dissertation contributes greater understanding of couple’s intimate household inequality as opposed to merely societal level male-female differences. Focusing on the role of children in promoting gender specialization, the dissertation points to the distinctive circumstances of mothers and fathers, as opposed to women and men (or married women and men) more generally. It elaborates on the role of particular correlates of inequality outcomes, such as education of partners. It works to identify cross-national similarities and differences in the levels of gender inequality as well as in the effects of individual-level predictors.

Nella quotidianità di un ambiente di cura oggi è difficile pensare ad un’attività che non coinvolga l’uso di una o più tecnologie: si pensi ad esempio quanto nell’accettazione di un paziente, nelle attività di anamnesi, di test, di diagnosi e di refertazione le azioni dipendano dal supporto di strumenti (non solo informatici). In questo senso, il lavoro medico si poggia su un’infrastruttura di tecnologie e sulla complessità delle connessioni esistenti tra di esse in cui medici, infermieri ed operatori lavorano attraverso artefatti che disciplinano la pratica medica. Per questo documenti digitali, tracciati record, tecnologie diagnostiche, linee guida, standard clinici e numerosi altri artefatti si intrecciano nel lavoro quotidiano di medici e infermieri. Si potrebbe pensare che tali strumenti prendano parte alle azioni proprio perché il loro uso risulta adatto ai compiti dei medici e implicitamente si intende che tale utilizzo sia in sintonia con il contesto in cui vengono utilizzati. Ma con una più attenta osservazione emerge invece che l’utilizzo di questi oggetti e tecnologie richiede un lavoro di relazione per essere gestiti tra le diverse necessità presenti nella quotidiana esecuzione delle pratiche mediche. In sintesi si tratta di mettere a fuoco quale lavoro è necessario per usarle in relazione alla pratica a cui sono destinate.

L'oggetto di studio della tesi è rappresentato dell'analisi delle conseguenze degli eventi familiari sulle carriere individuali, sia riguardo alla partecipazione al mercato del lavoro, sia riguardo agli esiti che il lavoro produce. Gli eventi familiari considerati sono: 1) l'inizio di una nuova unione familiare, 2) la nascita dei figli e 3) le dissoluzioni familiari (separazioni e divorzi). Il lavoro empirico è costruito attorno alla comparazione fra Italia e Stati Uniti: due contesti in cui lo Stato non promuove attivamente la conciliazione tra famiglia e lavoro e il sostegno pubblico all' occupazione femminile è limitato, sebbene il problema della mancanza di sostegno statale, in Italia trova risposta nella (o viene scaricato sulla) famiglia, mentre negli Stati Uniti è in gran parte risolto dal mercato. L'analisi empirica è condotta su dati di tipo longitudinale raccolti a livello nazionale: per l'Italia si è fatto ricorso all' indagine «Famiglie e Soggetti sociali» effettuata nel 2009 dall'ISTAT nell'ambito delle Indagini multiscopo sulle famiglie, mentre le analisi relative agli Stati Uniti sono state svolte sul Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID). Le principali tecniche di analisi adottate comprendono la panel data analysis e l'event history analysis. L'appartenenza dell' Italia e degli Stati Uniti rispettivamente al regime di welfare conservatore nella sua variante «mediterranea» e al regime di welfare liberale emerge come l'elemento istituzionale che meglio aiuta a interpretare i principali risultati empirici emersi in questo lavoro. Al di là del ruolo del regime di welfare nel determinare i tassi di occupazione femminili (Esping-Andersen 1990, 1999) esso ha un ruolo rilevante nel determinare le traiettorie occupazionali delle donne lungo il corso di vita. Nell'ambito della comparazione degli assetti istituzionali di Italia e Stati Uniti questo lavoro ha contribuito al dibattito circa le conseguenze lavorative degli eventi familiari in quattro direzioni: 1) si ritiene di aver fornito una misura dell' effetto dei figli sui tassi di occupazione femminili più accurata rispetto ai precedenti studi: In Italia, in particolare, si è stimato un effetto negativo superiore a quanto riscontrato in letteratura; 2) ci si è posto per la prima volta l'obiettivo di analizzare in maniera sistematica, per l'Italia, l'effetto del divorzio sull' occupazione femminile. Si è stimato un effetto positivo che persiste anche nel medio termine, limitato però alle donne senza figli in età prescolare; 3) questo lavoro non si è limitato a considerare gli effetti degli eventi familiari solo sulle carriere delle donne, ma ha allargato l'analisi alle conseguenze sul lavoro degli uomini. 4) Infine, è stato dimostrato che negli Stati Uniti le traiettorie occupazionali delle donne appartenenti alle coorti più recenti sono meno sensibili alla nascita dei figli, mentre in Italia accade l'esatto opposto. Nello specifico, in Italia la penalizzazione occupazionale della nascita di un figlio è significativamente più forte per le donne appartenenti alle coorti più recenti. Il risultato ha una grande rilevanza se si considera che nonostante a) le trasformazioni intervenute negli ultimi decenni riguardo al lavoro delle donne, b) la crescente presenza dei temi della conciliazione nel discorso pubblico e nella retorica politica e c) le timide politiche implementate a sostegno della famiglia, la conciliazione famiglia-lavoro è oggi più difficoltosa in Italia di quanto non fosse per le donne della generazione precedente.