Establishment of the independent Republic of Armenia in 1991 has been a turning point in the Armenian history; except for the existence of an independent Armenian republic between 1918 and 1920, by the dissolution of the USSR, Armenians gained an independent state after more than six hundred years. The transition of the Soviet Armenia to an independent republic stimulated not only the radical dislocation of the established economic, political and socio-cultural structures in Armenia, but also transformed the routine in the Armenian diaspora communities. In this process, aiding the frail and infant independent Armenian republic became a paramount ethno-national cause among the diaspora communities and, by extension, one of the principal ethno-national binders, as well as a chief cause of controversies. Overall, the post-1991 era has witnessed the re-territorialization of the de-territorialized Armenian political imagination in the diaspora. This facilitated the post-1991 trans-state Armenian ethno-national re-construction along the Armenia-diaspora nexus. A parallel process to that has been the construction of the social reality of the post-1991 Armenia. This dissertation examines the construction of the Armenian ethno-national social reality of the post-1991 Armenia through the discursive social practices of the Armenian state, new generation diaspora organizations and the diasporic individuals within the communicative space formed along the Armenia-diaspora nexus. The examination demonstrates that concerns over the physical and cultural survival of the Armenian ethno-nation expressed in different ways are the main considerations that eventually result in the construction of the post-1991 Armenia as the guardian and the soil of the Armenianness. From an abstract point of view, the actual agent of discourses that speaks through the Armenian state, new generation diaspora organizations and the diasporic individuals is the “anxious Armenian” who searches stability and security, reclaims her ethno-national identity, and is concerned about the cultural survival of the Armenian ethno-nation. Besides all, she is the one who “remembers” the genocide. This “anxious Armenian”, instead, is the person that the social memory of the genocide speaks itself through. As such, genocide is not only the “defining and founding moment” of the contemporary Armenian identity, but also the “defining and founding moment” of the post-1991 Armenia.

This dissertation studies the relationship existing between youth political organizations, music and national identity in contemporary Russia. In particular, it focuses on some of the most representative youth political organizations present in the city of St. Petersburg and aims at describing their contribution to the conceptualization of post-Soviet Russian national identity(ies), as captured through an analysis of their music.

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.

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.

The Eurozone crisis and the migration crisis generated a set of decisions at the EU level that aims to jointly mitigate the adverse consequences of economic and political turmoil. However, electoral successes by Eurosceptics at both EU and national levels and shrinking public support for the EU, as evidenced by Eurobarometer surveys, have shown that Euroscepticism has been surging in parallel with tighter cooperation of member states in crisis-ridden policy areas. Consequently, EU institutions have embraced the connecting potential of social media by implementing a series of online communication strategies aimed at selflegitimation and strengthening of public support for European integration. This study addresses the nature of Euroscepticism as reflected in online discussions via conducting a qualitative content analysis of Facebook debates unfolding on the pages of the European Parliament and the European Commission during the peak moments of the Eurozone crisis and the migration crisis. Moreover, the study identifies the public interpretations of different aspects of the two crises framed as existential for the process of European integration. The rhetorical analysis of the Facebook posts reveals how EU institutions utilize social media in order to respond to and normalise public discontent, whereas elite interviews triangulate the findings. The analysis of EU-focused transnational discussions complements the existing studies drawing on public opinion polls regarding public attitudes towards European integration, and re-conceptualises the common explanations for public Euroscepticism, mainly based on utilitarian or cultural hypotheses. The findings stemming from the rhetorical analysis and interviews demonstrate that EU crisis communication perpetuates the ingrained neo-functionalist and elitist modes of interaction despite the novel online communication setting.

The political landscape of the world is constituted by states of varying degrees of influence and capability. Major powers have immense resources at their disposal, while minor powers are often constrained in terms of structure and material. Thus, for minor powers, engaging in conventional wars against much larger and more powerful states is potentially ruinous to their economies and endangers their political survival. While researchers have explored interstate asymmetric conflicts involving major and middle powers, this project specifically analyzes asymmetric conflicts between minor and major powers, focusing on the former, and the post Cold-war period. This research aims to analyze conditions, highlighted by theories on war, under which minor powers go to war challenging major powers. This research employs multiple theories, thereby establishing an innovative, pluri-theoretical framework. This theoretical framework works well with a mixed-methods approach, a medium-N research design (crisp set methodology in Qualitative Comparative Analysis), and three comparative case studies: Iraq (1990), Moldova (1992) and Serbia (1999). This dissertation finds that by looking through the lenses of multiple theories, one can observe a more nuanced relationship between conditions faced by minor powers in militarized disputes and their decisions to go to war against a major power. First, different combinations of conditions can result in conflict. Second, domestic crisis, not external threat, tends to be of primary concern to minor powers. Third, minor powers enter a war to win based on very modest expectations. Fourth, minor powers of autocratic regime type can also misperceive the situation through anomalous beliefs. The importance of the study stems from the observation that minor powers still fight conventional asymmetric wars, despite growing military capabilities of major powers. Understanding the risks, minor powers gamble, hoping to keep their political benefits. This study enhances our understanding of conditions shaping the occurrence of asymmetric conflict.