The Third Sector Reform in Italy: an Opportunity for Matching Social Innovation and Youth Policies?

Abstract

Abstract Social innovation should represent a step forward activation policies, promoting a new balance between economic development and social cohesion, reducing inequalities and vulnerability. The Third sector is a privileged sphere of social innovation: there are many expectations on its ability to provide innovative answers to unaddressed social needs; one area of its intervention are youth policies. In Italy, the Third sector reform established new provisions on volunteering, civil service and social entrepreneurship, which should primarily benefit the youth. It allows to explore the double face of the Third sector transformation and of the European rhetoric on social innovation. On the one side institutions are trying to recognize emerging grass-root practices which combine social involvement, professional fulfillment and political action in order to respond new societal challenges. On the other side, the market is still fundamental in practices and discourses around social innovation, that maintain many contradictions of the activation policies.