This dissertation focuses on the experience of childlessness, which is an increasing one across European Countries. Namely, it deals with the socio-economic drivers and consequences that distinguish the life of childless individuals from that of parents. Mirroring each phase of a hypothetical individual lifecycle, it starts by analysing how intentions to be childless are later realised their realizations (Chapter 2). It then goes on to investigate the individual and contextual determinants of childlessness and how they have changed over time (Chapter 3 and Chapter 4). Last it considers the consequences that childlessness might induce in adulthood and later life (Chapter 5). This is done by combining demographic and sociological perspectives in a joint interpretative framework. Overall the thesis shows that both economic contraints and individual values has a role in determining the choice of a childless life, and highlights how these decisions are taken in contexts where a purality of macro factors interacts in moderating the indivdidual risk of being childless. Understanding the drives to childlessness is relevant also when interpreting the potential effects that being childless has on the life of individuals. All in all, the study shows that the consequences of being childless also depend on how people came to be without children.

The foundations of this work of research derived by the demonstration that the health is conditioning of a multiplicity by factors, the control of which is not exercised by the only health care system. Health inequalities, representing one of the most unjust and severe inequitable forms because health is one of the pre-conditions in order to live out fully individual life. Health inequality constitutes one of the worst scandals of our time, especially in developed and democratic countries. The theme of health inequalities is a subject beloved to the sociology, because their analysis allows, either to observe the social dynamics, either to understand as the social differences are distributed between the individuals within the society, especially with the current global economic crisis. The main objective of this study is, using comparative analysis, identify and distinguish the inequalities in health in the relationship between social conditions, risk factors, territorial context and state of health of the population, in two European countries (France and Italy), in order to understand their dynamics and as the territorial context affects the inequalities of health of individuals. Through a transnational approach this research project identifies differences and similarities between the two case studies. The results from our analysis, demonstrate the existence of "unexpected" similarities between groups of French and Italian people, despite different characteristics of social welfare and health systems.

This dissertation examines contemporary intergenerational inequalities and life chances, centering on how social origin shapes today’s labor market achievements. The overarching question guiding this work is whether the recent structural and institutional shifts impacting the stability and security of work-life trajectories have fostered greater equality of opportunity, reinforced existing disparities, or even generated new ones. The research unfolds through four empirical chapters, each engaging with the broader theoretical framework, and employing and developing advanced methodological approaches. The first chapter delves into the repercussions of macro-level institutional transformations on work-life trajectories in Germany and the UK, revealing country-specific nuances in exposure and economic penalties associated with accumulated employment instability across birth cohorts. The second chapter broadens the perspective by revealing that family background significantly influences exposure to income and earnings volatility across the lifecycle, over and above the levels of individuals’ resources, with institutionally driven variations between Denmark, Germany, and the United States. Moving to specific life course junctures, the third chapter illustrates how flexibilization-driven inequalities during the school-to-work transition interact with intergenerational social inequalities, in Italy more than in Germany. This research highlights that only Italian workers from advantaged family backgrounds manage to offset occupational penalties resulting from unstable labor market entry. The final chapter, focusing on the UK labor market and using an experimental design, unveils significant discriminatory tendencies favoring candidates with high-status backgrounds, intersecting gender, and parenthood. Through these empirical contributions, this dissertation advances our understanding of evolving intergenerational inequalities, emphasizing the importance of adopting a life-course perspective for a comprehensive analysis.

Darknet markets have emerged due to technological advancements, decreasing the likelihood of violence by facilitating remote purchasing interactions. However, the absence of traditional legal frameworks makes maintaining order in these illegal online markets challenging. Without a legitimate state to enforce property rights or quality standards, sustaining order becomes increasingly complex. Despite its illicit nature and the absence of a legitimate state to protect market transactions, the darknet market has proven to be a resilient environment where user satisfaction rivals that of traditional e-commerce platforms such as eBay. How is this possible? Howcan social order emerge in such a context? Existing studies have primarily approached the issue from neo-institutionalist and social network perspectives, examining the emergence of social order through informal institutions and repeated interactions. A notable gap remains in understanding the cognitive aspects shaping decision-making processes in these illicit markets. This dissertation aims to fill this gap by examining the role of social influence in establishing the social order of the market in the absence of legal safeguards from a socio-cognitive lean.

The dissertation investigates gender inequalities in Italian academia concerning career progression and tenure, and how these inequalities intersect with parenthood and fertility. Structured around three empirical chapters, it examines the impact of parenthood on men's and women's academic careers and how academic progression influences men's and women's fertility behaviour. The research uses an extensive empirical dataset, including administrative records of PhD holders and unique primary data collected from Italian academics. Advanced regression-based techniques and event history analysis are applied to analyse the data. The first chapter focuses on the academic journey from PhD to employment, assessing potential gender differences in career choices. The second chapter examines gender differences in academic progression in terms of the time elapsed between obtaining a PhD and being appointed to different academic positions, assessing the role of fertility in contributing to gender disparities. The third chapter aims to understand how academic careers shape the fertility behaviour of academic women and men. The findings shed light on the complex interplay between gender, parenthood and academic careers, revealing significant challenges faced by women in academia, particularly in terms of career progression and balancing fertility decisions.

In this work, moving back and forth along complementary perspectives, I aim to provide an in-depth analysis of the social stratification of eating and feeding practices in an Italian context, with a special focus on the school canteen as a possible enhancer of children’s dietary compliance. Although the thesis cannot be read as a single monograph, the fil rouge that runs through the chapters presents new insights on the ways eating and feeding are organised, regulated, differentiated, and reproduced in Italy by adults and children. In fact, each chapter reads as an autonomous contribution, accompanied by a specific literature review, that distinctively adds to a branch of the research on food sociology, from health to consumption passing through childhood. Nevertheless, this does not imply that the chapters are disconnected, and the reader will often find cross references throughout the manuscript. The thesis is constructed on two different blocks, divided by methodology, but held together by the first chapter, in which I discuss the socio-philosophical foundation of the research. Here I initially draw from Bourdieu’s practice theory to discuss the theoretical and methodological foundations of the thesis, and I subsequently examine the concepts of eating and feeding practices, eventually outlining the contribution of each empirical chapter. Therefore, the first block seeks to identify theoretically informed empirical regularities using Bourdieu’s (2011) theory of capitals, and its adaptation to health behaviours as proposed by Abel (2007; 2008). This part aims to ‘quantify’ how capital constrictions shape food consumption and beyond. Chapter 2, focusing on gender differences in health behaviours among adults (Courtenay, 2000), analyses the determinants of dietary compliance, drinking behaviour and smoking, and how gender differentials change depending on the respondent’s levels of cultural capital. Chapter 3, however, which paves the way for the subsequent ethnography, focuses on the determinants of dietary compliance among Italian schoolchildren, and specifically on the role of the school canteen as an equaliser that can mitigate health inequalities by improving the diet of most disadvantaged children. In the second block, I focus on eating and feeding practices as social constructions. This part of the work allows me to go behind and beyond the empirical regularities shown in the previous chapters. Behind, because qualitative data provide an opportunity to consider the epistemological foundations and the political implications of the construction of dietary compliance, in school and at home; beyond, because they allow us to excavate in vivo how eating and feeding are part of a contested field of knowledge that depends on family endowments. The three chapters are hence based on the ethnographic fieldwork and the in-depth interviews conducted in four Italian primary schools. Chapter 4, partially rooted in the Foucauldian tradition of governmentality studies, uses the concept of strategy and tactics (de Certeau, 1984) to analyse the construction and implementation of a healthy meal and the resistances that arise around and within the school canteen. On a different note, chapter 5 makes use of the in-depth interviews with parents and the fieldnotes gathered in Poversano and Goldazzo school canteens to study how cultural and economic family resources shape parental feeding practices, their perception of the school meal and children’s knowledge of healthy food and cuisine. Finally, chapter 6 illustrates what happens to food education programs when they are applied in extreme contexts, such as the school of a poverty-stricken neighbourhood of Palermo. In the conclusions, I summarise the most important findings of the manuscript, and I draw attention to the possible implications for school food programs as well as for future directions for research.

Every human being is familiar to the experience of reminiscence: recalling and revisiting our past memories. We reminisce to create our identities. We reminisce to maintain our relationships. We reminisce to review our lives. And we also reminisce together. This dissertation develops around the topic of how IT stimulates reminiscence, motivated by its proven benefits in peopleâ s well-being and its prevalence across all stages of life. The focus is set on older adults, with the overall goal of fostering intergenerational social interactions (that is, interactions between older adults and younger generations). This thesis is motivated by the current interest on active ageing as an emergent way of life, with better and more opportunities for health, participation and security. As the world ageing population continues to increase and the average life expectancy of people increasing every year, there is a growing need for understanding the ageing phenomena, and particularly, for designing human centered information technologies (IT) that enhance opportunities of social participation as people age. Within this scenario, this dissertation addresses the following research questions using a participatory approach to research and design: (i) what is the role of IT in enabling a more happy and active ageing?; (ii) in doing so, how can IT stimulate intergenerational social interactions?, and (iii) can IT-supported social reminiscence facilitate these interactions and make of them an enjoyable experience?. To answer these questions, we leverage upon a participatory action research approach to gain an understanding of the topic, moving later to the participatory design of IT for social reminiscence and finally, evaluating how IT supports the practice of social reminiscence in a face-to-face intergenerational context. The contributions of this dissertation can be summarized as follows: - Knowledge: an understanding of what role IT can play in supporting, stimulating and accompanying active ageing and social interactions through the practice of reminiscence. - Model: a conceptual model of the different stages of IT-supported social reminiscence sessions, and an extended model of the design spaces for intergenerational engagement. - System: an exemplary socio-technical system that fits the aforementioned roles, including a knowledge base and algorithms to support contextual stimulation of reminiscence, using multimedia resources that are publicly available on the web. - Evaluation: quantitative and qualitative results obtained from observing the use of our system in a real intergenerational context.

The thesis contributes to the explanation of two well-documented phenomena: the strong decline in fertility rates and the parallel increase in female labour market participation which occurred in the last decades in most OECD countries. The argument is studied by means of a European comparison and an in-depth analysis of the Italian case. An innovative aspect of the work is the combination of cultural and structural explanations. In fact, the main argument of the thesis is that cross-national differences and the puzzling Italian and Southern European pattern of low fertility and low female labour market participation should be understood as stemming from the interplay between different factors, related to a structural – Welfare Regimes and the Economic Theory of the Family – and a cultural theoretical framework – the Second Demographic Transition and the distinction between “strong” and “weak” family systems. In detail, the thesis shows empirically how both women’s opportunity-costs and households’ economic resources as well as family values and preferences are useful to understand fertility and female labour market participation behaviours. ILFI (Indagine Longitudinale sulle Famiglie Italiane, 1997-2005) data have been used to demonstrate how individual- and household-level mechanisms, connected with social stratification, underlying the transition to parenthood and female labour market participation around childbirths are coherent with the Italian familialistic institutional setting. Italy is an interesting case not least because of its strong regional heterogeneity, which concerns also the family formation process. Adopting an epidemiological approach, ILFI and IARD data on the condition of youth (2004) are exploited to show how the regional heterogeneity in family behaviours within Italy, such as the lower age at parenthood and the higher fertility rates in Southern regions in the selected cohorts, may be largely explained by differences in family values. This first hint suggesting the role of culture on demographic behaviours is developed further in a comparative setting using EVS (European Values Study, 1990-2008) data. The latter allowed to assess directly the importance of values and attitudes for women’s labour market participation and fertility decisions in 15 European countries. Finally, the comparison between the different paths followed by Italy and the Netherlands in the last thirty years is discussed as an example of how changes in the institutional settings in order to foster work-family reconciliation are deeply embedded within wider processes of social change. Based on the developed theoretical framework and the results of the mentioned empirical analyses, the author attempts to integrate different streams of the literature and presents an argumentation about the complex interplay between interests, ideas and institutions underlying fertility and female labour market participation trends and patterns.

This research investigates why people acquire dual citizenship. It focuses on the acquisition of dual citizenship through residency, with a processual lens and under conditions of “ordinariness” to tackle aspects that are usually overlooked. It builds on the differentiated access to dual citizenship granted to Peruvian migrants by the Italian and Spanish citizenship regimes. The 79 Peruvian migrants included in the study are either prospective dual citizens or actual dual citizens. The research builds on qualitative methods ranging from participant observation to in-depth semi-structured interviews. It investigates the motivations, expectations and contingences that bring migrants to the status acquisition. The analysis distinguishes between early and postponed acquisitions to highlight how practices of convenience and everyday forms of substantive commitment can coexist under the same national umbrella. Moreover it suggests that the availability and accessibility of the dual status cannot be conflated with a supposed desirability. Although nation-states design their citizenship and immigration regimes according to normative stances that should shape their ideal citizenry, individuals qua migrants manage to forge their own way into the host community while formally abiding the law. Thus, migrants’ pathways across statuses are the result of structural constraints as much as personal preferences and deliberate positioning vis-à-vis nation-states. The study shows how people navigate the laws through both legal and semi-legal means; how they cultivate constellations of belonging that do not necessarily match formal memberships; and how they invest citizenship with multiple meanings that can converge, collide, or simply bypass the state-led rhetoric on national membership.

Il lavoro di ricerca qui proposto si inserisce nel filone delle ricerche sulla mobilità intragenerazionale appena esposto. Questo tema è ampiamente affrontato negli studi che si occupano dell’analisi del mercato del lavoro e dei suoi cambiamenti avvenuti nel corso del secolo scorso. Tuttavia, la gran parte della letteratura si concentra sull’ingresso o sull’uscita delle donne dal mondo lavorativo tralasciando lo studio delle loro effettive possibilità di sperimentare un cambiamento di posizione occupazionale. Rispetto agli studi già condotti in questo ambito, riteniamo possa essere interessante aggiungere all’analisi delle carriere femminili anche altri aspetti. Un primo ambito di analisi è l’influenza della posizione occupazionale dei mariti e dei padri sulla carriera delle donne. Un altro ambito riguarda l’influenza di due eventi familiari di particolare rilevanza, quali il matrimonio e la nascita di un figlio, sull’abbandono del mondo del lavoro e sulla chance di cambiamento della posizione occupazionale delle donne. Con il primo interrogativo di ricerca, ci proponiamo di indagare se, nel corso del ventesimo secolo, si siano modificati i modelli di mobilità di carriera in Italia. La seconda domanda di ricerca cercherà invece di capire come gli eventi familiari - matrimonio e nascita di un figlio - influiscano sulla partecipazione delle donne al mercato del lavoro. Infine, con la terza domanda di ricerca, ci chiediamo come gli eventi sopra esposti influenzino le opportunità di carriera delle stesse. Per rispondere agli interrogativi indicati, prenderemo in considerazione lo studio sia dei fattori inerenti la dimensione individuale, sia di quelli specifici riguardanti l’ambito strutturale. L’analisi di questa ultima sfera permetterà di porre attenzione sui cambiamenti che hanno interessato, a partire dagli anni cinquanta del secolo scorso, il sistema produttivo italiano e le modifiche riguardanti i meccanismi di regolamentazione nei rapporti di impiego. Per quanto riguarda, invece, la dimensione individuale, ci si propone di studiare in profondità alcune caratteristiche sociodemografiche dei soggetti, come il genere, la coorte di nascita e il titolo di studio: quelle che gli studiosi di questo ambito ritengono fondamentali per capire come si strutturano le disuguaglianze. Per raggiungere il nostro obiettivo è stata presa in considerazione l'Indagine Longitudinale delle Famiglie Italiane (ILFI 1997-2005) e sono stati utilizzati una pluralità di strumenti statistici, quali tavole di mobilità, tecniche di event history analysis, modelli log-lineari e modelli di regressione logistica. Rispetto al primo interrogativo di ricerca, il quadro che emerge dalle nostre analisi mostra che nel nostro paese sono presenti contenuti tassi di mobilità di carriera e che nel corso delle coorti sia possibile rilevare solo una lieve variazione rispetto alle opportunità di cambiamento di classe per gli individui. Prendendo in considerazione il secondo interrogativo proposto, abbiamo potuto constatare come siano soprattutto le donne maggiormente istruite a rimanere nel mercato del lavoro, anche in occasione del matrimonio e della nascita di un figlio. La possibilità di lavorare solo per una parte della giornata (usufruendo, quindi, di contratti part-time) sembra leggermente favorire la conciliazione tra famiglia e lavoro. All'opposto, abbiamo riscontrato una maggiore propensione all'abbandono nei casi in cui le garanzie legislative del lavoro vengono a mancare. La posizione lavorativa del partner ha mostrato di avere un importante ruolo. Così, il vantaggio relativo del marito sulla moglie porta quest'ultima ad abbandonare il mercato del lavoro per occuparsi, con molte probabilità, al lavoro domestico. Infine è apparso evidente che la nascita del primo figlio ha una forte spinta a uscire dal mercato.