Work In Italy Research Articles

Cultural entrepreneurship in Shakespeare’s Italy

This study deals with Shakespeare's work in Italy and how it has been used today in the form of cultural entrepreneurship. The three famous works he inspired and wrote about the Veneto region, namely "The Merchant of Venice", "Romeo and Juliet", and "The Taming of the Shrews" have been a trigger for many travelers to visit Italy since ancient times even in the context of the "Big Tour". Today the cities mentioned in the works and especially Verona have developed cultural entrepreneurship in the footsteps of "Romeo and Juliet".

Variations in the Five Facets of Mindfulness in Italian Oncology Nurses according to Sex, Work Experience in Oncology, and Shift Work.

Oncology nurses support cancer patients in meeting their self-care needs, often neglecting their own emotions and self-care needs. This study aims to investigate the variations in the five facets of holistic mindfulness among Italian oncology nurses based on gender, work experience in oncology, and shift work. A cross-sectional study was carried out in 2023 amongst all registered nurses who were employed in an oncology setting and working in Italy. There were no significant differences in all five facets of holistic mindfulness (p ≥ 0.05) according to gender, work experience in the oncology field, and shift work. Could holistic mindfulness be defined as an intrinsic individual characteristic? Surely, more insights will be necessary to better define the holistic trend in oncology nursing.

‘Entirely white’? Female immigrants and domestic work in Italy (1960s–1970s)

AbstractRecently, a renewed history of foreign immigration in Italy, focusing on the very first migration flows after the Second World War, has offered a more appropriate periodisation of the phenomenon. Women have been at the forefront of these flows, which were initially determined by the new postcolonial setting of the former Italian colonies (Eritrea, Somalia and Ethiopia). Subsequently, the immigrants came from various other countries (Spain, Cape Verde, Portugal, El Salvador, Peru, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Ceylon, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan). At the same time, the majority of them were employed in a specific sector of the labour market: domestic work. This article focuses on female immigrants who were employed as domestic workers, their presence in public discourse in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s, and government policies in this area. Drawing on statistical data and surveys, press and audiovisual materials, and feminist theory and practices, it aims to analyse the construction of paradigms – visibility, invisibility, subalternity, rights and racialisation – associated with female immigration and domestic work as a specific sector of employment.

Ethnography of exploitation in seasonal agricultural labor. The case of Bulgarian Roma laborers in Apulia, Southern Italy

This paper analyses a case of severe labour exploitation, involving a group of Bulgarian fruit and vegetable pickers of Roma origin employed in the seasonal harvest, especially of tomatoes, in the Foggia area involved in a 10-year cycle of seasonal migration between Italy and Bulgaria. The essay presents the general characteristics and factors affecting the form of extreme exploitation in farm work in Italy and reconstructs the working conditions and migration trajectories of this group of farm laborers of Roma origin to see how ethnicity, widespread anti-Gypsyism, and forms of extreme social exclusion accentuate the dynamics of labor exploitation. This group experiences the most intense forms of exploitation on the ground compared to other exploited foreign laborers. The case study is based on ethnographic that lasted about 2 years and interviews with privileged witnesses.

Integrating green infrastructure in Italian urban plans. Lessons from Turin and Bologna

Spatial planning constitutes an institutional activity of government and governance that sets up reference development frameworks to coordinate policies and actions for cities and territories. This activity is functional to have coherence and support the implementation of European and international policies focused on socio-ecological transition. The study provides an overview of how the concept of green infrastructure (GI) is central to spatial planning to enable a sustainable regeneration of contemporary cities and territories and to protect biodiversity within a climate-proof framework of interventions. The research aim is to explore the modalities of GI methodological integration in urban planning to address the green transition. Two Italian case studies have been selected to investigate how differently structured urban plans at the local scale design and interpret GI. The discussion from the comparative case study analysis focuses on what one can learn from conformative planning approaches in response to contemporary challenges and with respect to the regulatory framework in force. Final reflections concern the need to work in Italy on a review of the traditional urban planning model with new national fundamental principles, providing a framework for coherence and coordination of the national post-pandemic recovery programme.

The Influence of Argentine psychoanalytic culture in Italy

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many Italians emigrated to South America, especially to Argentina and Brazil, in search of a better life than the one they were living in a country tormented by social and economic unrest. Later, with the advent of a political situation in Argentina strongly marked by instability, especially with the coup d’état that sanctioned the rise to power of General Videla in 1976, those who could boast even distant ties of kinship in Italy chose that destination instead to continue to build their lives. Among these were several who had been trained in psychoanalysis in Argentina. Once they started working in Italy, they necessarily passed on their training background influenced by a psychoanalysis that, in Argentina, had already started to think in terms of “field” and begun to be applied to groups and institutions.

Bringing Labour Markets Back in: Inclusionary and Exclusionary Solidarities in Platform Delivery Work in Italy and Belgium

This research showcases the ways in which the labour market informs the formation of different types of solidarities among platform workers. Building on qualitative research that focuses on the delivery sector in Italy and Belgium, we demonstrate diversity in forms of solidarities built among platform workers. While in Italy, in- and out-group boundaries, particularly those based on language and ethnicity, are successfully crossed by platform workers resulting in what we describe as inclusionary solidarities, in Belgium, they remain rigid resulting in exclusionary solidarities. Our findings demonstrate that two distinct forms of solidarity are informed by the functioning of labour markets, which shape workers’ options for exit outside of the platform world and hence the degree of platform dependency. These processes contribute to the creation of variegated understandings of self and others at work and in the labour market at large that in turn inform the ways in which workers relate to one another and form solidarities.

Mutualism, class composition, and the reshaping of worker organisation in platform work and the gig economy

This article contributes an understanding of mutualism as a foundational element in emergent worker collectivism. We challenge mainstream institutionalist accounts in industrial relations, especially from the Global North, that downplay processes of bottom-up regeneration of working-class organisation. We discuss compositional accounts of class formation and examine previous understandings of mutualism, then apply our conceptual framework to evidence from international literature and our own research on platform work in Italy and the UK. Three important themes emerge in understanding worker self-organisation: the demographics of the workforce, including migration backgrounds and social ties beyond the workplace; the existence of social relations in the ethnic/political/local community; and the relevance of free spaces of resource sharing and recomposition in the absence of a fixed place of work. We conclude that an understanding of mutualism can help to grasp emergent solidarities among new groups of workers within and beyond both platform work and trade unions.

The Making of Public Works in Italy: Institutional Features and Regional Characteristics

The Making of Public Works in Italy: Institutional Features and Regional Characteristics

Nighttime working as perceived by Italian anesthesiologists: a secondary analysis of an international survey

BackgroundNo data are available on the working conditions and workload of anesthesiologists during perioperative nighttime work in Italy and on the perceived risks.ResultsWe analyzed 1085 responses out of the 5292 from the whole dataset. Most of the responders (76%) declared working a median of 12 consecutive hours during night shifts, with an irregular nightshift schedule (70%). More than half of the responders stated to receive a call 2–4 (40%) or 5 times or more (25%) to perform emergency procedures and/or ICU activities during night shifts. More than 70% of the responders declared having relaxation rooms for nighttime work (74%) but none to be used after a nightshift before going back home (82%) and no free meals, snacks, or beverages (89%). Furthermore, almost all (95%) of the surveyed anesthesiologists declared not having received specifical training or education on how to work at night, and that no institutional program has been held by the hospital to monitor fatigue or stress for night workers (99%). More than half of the responders stated having the possibility, sometimes (38%) or always (45%), to involve another colleague in difficult medical decisions and to feel comfortable, sometimes (31%) or always (35%), to call the on-call colleague. Participants declared that nighttime work affects their quality of life extremely (14%) or significantly (63%), and that sleep deprivation, fatigue, and current working conditions may reduce performance (67%) and increase risk for the patients (74%).ConclusionsItalian anesthesiologists declare current nighttime practice to negatively affect their quality of life, and their performance, and are thus concerned for their patients’ safety. Proper education on night work, starting from traineeship, and implementing institutional programs to monitor stress and fatigue of operators and to support them during nighttime work could be a mean to improve nighttime work conditions and safety for both patients and healthcare workers.

The future of hybrid work in Italy: A survey-based Socio-Technical-System analysis

The urgent lockdowns introduced by many countries at the beginning of 2020 to contain the rapid diffusion of the COVID-19 pandemic overturned many paradigms, significantly affecting workers’ daily routines. Since regulations, policies, habits, and practices have changed, it is legitimate to wonder what will happen, in the long run, to the high percentage of employees who used to work remotely. We analyzed flexibility in time, place, and contract, to examine the complex constellation of hybrid work arrangements through its essential and commonly understood elements (flexibility types) and their interconnections, distinguishing between workers usually based in the office and those based off-site. Adopting the Socio-Technical-System (STS) framework, the paper investigates whether and to what extent companies have changed their structures by designing new functions, roles, and services, such as a head of agile work, work-life balance policies, and psychological support services. We empirically analyze the hybrid work phenomenon through a micro-survey of indirect questions involving approximately 600 Italian respondents. Italy is an interesting analysis domain because radical changes have been introduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper presents three main theoretical advancements. First, the study advances the research on flexibility in terms of space, time, and contracts, finding different types of interdependencies with on-site and off-site working. Second, the study extends the theories on the STS framework to flexible work, identifying whether and to what extent interdependencies occur among its main components: the social structure, people, technology, and tasks of hybrid work. The STS framework has also been used to explain the evolution of organizational priorities during the pandemic phases, revealing a relationship between the new role of “head of remote/hybrid workforce” and place flexibility. Third, the paper proves micro-surveys effectiveness with indirect questions in investigating socioeconomic and organizational phenomena. From a practical point of view, the collected data show that Italian organizations need to prepare to deal with the new work scenario because new recommendations should be given to human resource departments about managing hybrid work.

“One-size-fits-all” public works contract does it better? An assessment of infrastructure provision in Italy

Public infrastructure procurement is a crucial policy tool, a prerequisite for public and private investments and for economic and social capital growth. Low performance in execution severely hinders infrastructure provision and benefits delivery. One of the most sensitive phases in public infrastructure procurement is the design because of the strategic relationship that it potentially creates between procurers and contractors in the execution stage, affecting the costs and the duration of the contract. In this paper, using recent developments in non-parametric frontiers and propensity score matching, we evaluate the performance in the execution of public works in Italy. The analysis provides robust evidence of significant improvement of performance where procurers opt for design and build contracts, which lead to lower transaction costs, allowing contractors to better accommodate the project in the execution. Our findings bear considerable policy implications.

A Travel Book by an Artist-Pensioner: The Russian Artistic Community in Italy and the Disadvantages of Academic Education

The article is devoted to an album of drawings by an unknown Russian artist-pensioner of the mid-1850s from the circle of A.P. Bogolyubov. The young draughtsman, who had an excellent academic education, traveled around Italy, drawing typical views and genre scenes, while to a greater extent trying on the role of S. Shchedrin and K. Bryullov in his search for creative identity. The album is set within the broad context of the work in Italy of young Russian artists. Similar stylistic and iconographic analogies are drawn from similar sources — the travel sketches of A.P.Bogolubov and F.A. Bronnikov, as well as the album of F.A. Klages. A careful comparison of the works by the novice masters allows us to draw conclusions about the common problems experienced by the young graduates of the Imperial Academy of Arts who had excellent technical skills and, at the same time, a poor readiness for individual artistic exploration. The drawings examined in the article significantly expand the circle of visual sources on the Russian artistic community in Italy. In some cases there are portraits and caricature, as well as the development of the iconography of typical scenes (for example, “Interrupted rendezvous” by Karl Bryullov or “Temptation” by N. Shilder). The album contains many inscriptions, which are also published alongside to facilitate the identification of the author by subsequent researchers.

Gulag Literature in Italy (1991-2022). A Few Notes on Editions and Re-editions of a 'Minimal Canon'

The paper deals with the publishing history in the post-Soviet era of three very prominent works in Gulag literature in Italian translation – Life and Fate by Vasilij Grossman, Kolyma Tales by Varlam Šalamov and The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solženicyn – in order to reconstruct their Italian reception in the years 1991-2022. The controversies surrounding the publication of these works in Italy are also discussed, and it is noted how the Italian press has paid particular attention to them, with major Italian writers reviewing the editions and contributing to their Italian reception. Finally, the lack of critical reflection by Italian Russianists on Gulag literature is discussed.

Docu-musical, migration and media reflexivity in The Harvest (2017) and Dimmi chi sono (2019)

ABSTRACT In the documentaries The Harvest (2017, Andrea Paco Mariani) and Dimmi chi sono (Sarita, 2019, Sergio Basso), the directors seek to raise awareness of a rarely told story, true to the tradition of politically engaged documentary. The Harvest denounces the slavery-like conditions in which Indian harvest hands work in Italy, while Dimmi chi photosono serves both as an archive for forgotten stories of the stateless Lhotshampa (an ethnic group displaced from Bhutan to Nepal) and to reveal the role of audio-visual media as vehicles for individual and collective memory. Though they tell very different stories, the films are united by their search for a suitable documentary language, since they can no longer rely on the authenticity effects that have been made hackneyed by the mass media to lend credibility to their accounts. The directors therefore combine conventional documentary methods with intermedial references to painting and photography, in particular pastiches of Hollywood/Bollywood musical scenes, so as to question Western concepts of authenticity.

Modéliser la prise de Constantinople (1204) •

AbstractThe fictional letters on the capture of Constantinople in 1204 and its aftermath written by the professor of rhetoric Boncompagno da Signa for his treatise Boncompagnus (1215/1226) form a prime document for examining the relationship between real and fictional correspondence in the Middle Ages. By comparing their content, structure, and rhetorical devices with those of a set of documents written on the same theme, including the letter sent by Baldwin of Flanders to Pope Innocent III to report on the events of 1204, it is possible to identify the way in which Boncompagno drew inspiration from this official letter to compose his model letter, and what differentiates them. This comparative analysis allows us not only to deepen our knowledge of the processes of the fictionalisation of history at work in Italy in the thirteenth century, but also to take a different look at the rhetoric of official letters or other texts (poems, stories) relating the same events.

‘Another work routine is possible’: everyday experiences of (unexpected) remote work in Italy

ABSTRACT The article discusses the opinions and perceptions of knowledge workers in Italy concerning the shift to remote work during the first countrywide lockdown (March–May 2020) imposed to contain the Covid-19 outbreak. Prior to the pandemic, remote work arrangements in the Italian context were not common. Thanks to a set of 35 interviews to workers who experienced significant disruption to their usual working routine because of the health crisis, we show that a marked element of discovery of remote work characterizes their accounts, articulated across 3 dimensions: temporal organization of work and life, technology, and social relations. We argue that this experience was instrumental for many of them to learn that ‘another work routine is possible’, because of the opportunity to try out alternative arrangements in the management of tasks and responsibilities. Yet issues of work-life balance, together with managerial cultures anchored in pre-pandemic forms of organization, considerably affect this perception.

Migration and Elderly Care Work in Italy: Three Stories of Romanian and Moldovan Care Workers

Migration and Elderly Care Work in Italy: Three Stories of Romanian and Moldovan Care Workers

Intra-family mafia pedagogy: the role of juvenile justice and social work in Italy

The sociological and legal literature on the subject of mafia acculturation within the family has repeatedly urged the intervention of the institutions to operate both in the social field, through adequate support networks, and in the judicial field, through measures against the so-called 'children of the mafia' who, from an early age, become the recipients of a mafia pedagogy, aimed, over time, at preparing them for anti-legal and anti-social conducts and which denies them, in fact, the achievement of an existential and working autonomy with the aim of freeing them from the criminal culture. This study, therefore, after investigating the mechanisms of such acculturation, the deviant perspectives, the role of the Social Services, the quality of the disvalues imparted and oriented towards the demolition of the culture of democracy, the breaking of laws, and the failure to respect social values and norms, has also attempted to verify the possibility of constructing a truly effective legal, organizational and social model that would address - from a systematic perspective - the phenomenon of the involvement of minors in criminal associations and the suggestion exerted by certain imposed intra-family mafia cultural models, as well as the tools to protect the fundamental right of the minor to receive a responsible upbringing, consistent with constitutional values and civil coexistence, which can only be achieved through a process of harmonization of the civil law regulations governing parental responsibility and parental authority proceedings.

If You Give Bureaucrats an Inch, Will They Take a Yard? Lessons from Threshold Regulatory Reform in Italy

The role of discretion in public procurement has been the subject of wide debate in regulation literature and practice. Greater discretion potentially may allow for greater efficiency in procurement. However, when social capital and institutional quality are low, more discretion can easily open the door to bribery and corruption. In this paper, adopting a semiparametric approach and using a large dataset of public works managed by Italian municipalities, we empirically assess the effects of a reform in the regulation of public works in Italy, approved in 2011, that has increased the discretion of bureaucrats in the choice of the firms. The results provide evidence that the reform has exerted a positive, although mild, effect on the performance of public works execution. However, the positive role of the reform is more relevant in those areas where the effect of public service norms and prosocial behaviors are higher.