I youth of Southern Italy they deserve particular attention: both for the specificity of their social condition and to encourage an awareness of the particular difficult conditions in which they have to carry out their life projects. reasons why theYouth Observatory of the Giuseppe Toniolo Institute, from year to year, study the generation of Millennials, young people who came of age from 2000 onwards, and also turns his interest towards Generation Z, or all those born in the new millennium. A longitudinal investigation of the condition of youth, which focuses on a territorial reading in such a way as to allow a comparison between young people from the South, those from Central and Northern Italy.
Paola Bignardi, coordinator of the Institute, still believes that the attention paid to the youth question by those social, economic and institutional subjects who have great responsibility towards the new generations and their entry into society as protagonists is insufficient. The risk that the adult generation will rely on outdated knowledge by the rapidity of the changes taking place causes young people to continue to remain in a condition of social marginalization penalizing for them and for the whole of society, mortifying the drive towards innovation that above all they are able to give.
The Summary Notes of Svimez report 2019 on the economy and society of the South bring into sharp focus, together with the increasingly evident gap between the two Italys, a series of transversal criticalities:
- Collapse of public investment.
- Alarming demographic crisis.
- Flight of young people from their regions of origin.
- Women's employment at significantly lower levels than men's.
- High dropout rate.
Data also highlighted by the Miur, which in July 2019 published a focus on Early school leaving in the year 2016-2017 and in the transition to the 2017-2018 school year. And in January 2020, together with Equal Opportunities, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding for the fight against early school leaving and the promotion of equal opportunities and the right to study with the National Association of Italian Municipalities (ANCI).
The Report on the fight against educational failure drawn up by the Miur notes the increase in early school leaving in every area – in the North, Center and South – where household poverty is concentrated, especially in the urban suburbs and in areas of massive social exclusion and in those territories where unemployment, cultural poverty, urban decay, lack of educational and cultural offer are significant widespread and lack of early educational interventions.
In addition to fostering specific knowledge of young people, the studies conducted by the Youth Observatory set themselves the undoubtedly arduous goal of bringing out resources, highlighting potential, giving visibility to those experiences which, perhaps under the radar, speak of the vitality of a creative youthful world full of passion.
The deficit of the southern regions compared to the northern ones is also confirmed by studies on the specific level of the value of networks and social ties. Like the empirical researches of Paola Bordandini and Roberto Cartocci, which bring attention back to the still current differences of civicness between the northern and central regions, at a higher level, and the southern ones.
Even research aimed at territorial mapping of resources of a social nature, such as the National Report on voluntary organizations of CSVnet, show that on indicators such as the distribution of voluntary organizations by geographical area, the percentage of presence in the North equal to 47,2 per cent it is double that of the South and almost 20 percentage points higher than that of the Centre.
In fact, an investigation into the complex world of youth, the authors recall, cannot do without reflecting on a system of networks and alliances between educational agencies, primarily school and family, and then with all the other socialization agencies, such as parishes and associations of all kinds.
In fact, a prolonged marginalization of a young person, in the stages of life which, under normal conditions, should represent entry into the labor market, risks definitively excluding him from the productive world. Returning to the definitions of Becker and Coleman, to distinguish the status of NEET is also the risk of entering paths of social marginalization.
The data from the survey by the Toniolo Institute Youth Observatory tell us that being NEET, while respecting the complex articulation of this social category, does not change the condition of well-being, or rather malaise, at various latitudes, as if to underline that the condition of extreme vulnerability makes young people more similar beyond their place of origin.
On the other hand, a precarious working condition – like that of a student – makes the young people of the South less satisfied, most likely because the threat of suffering a downgrade employment towards the condition of NEET is perceived as a real danger.
instead, having a stable job it makes young people happier in the South than in the North. Employment status is closely related to perception of the future by the sample of young people interviewed, in an even more emblematic way with respect to subjective well-being. A feeling of distrust and perplexity towards the future thus appears in the younger classes, even before they can really face the difficulties of the labor market.
For the authors it is not surprising greater confidence of the self-employed. Despite being a type of employment exposed to business risk or connected to a professional activity - and therefore more easily prey to unfavorable economic situations - it is understandable how the choice of working on your own puts in some way "into account" the possibility of running of the risks.
Although in general a decrease in the sense of well-being is perceived with advancing age, the data show that the increase in educational level, i.e. of the qualifications obtained, is positively linked with an increase in perceived well-being.
So too the educational level of the parents has a significant effect: the children of parents with intermediate or high educational qualifications show a greater expected well-being, with the same values in the other variables. This aspect is, for the authors, of absolute importance, because the educational qualification of the parents is a useful one background proxy income of the family of origin.
Absolutely is the status of permanent employee to be associated with a higher level of well-being. On the other hand, the category most penalized are once again the NEETs.
Emiliano Sironi underlines how a topic of great interest for the country's not only economic but also demographic development is given by the difficult transition to adulthood of young Italians.
Until the seventies of the twentieth century life steps they represented a standard path – completion of studies, entry into the world of work, leaving the family of origin, formation of a union which almost always coincided with marriage, birth of one or more children – while now they have undergone a progressive upheaval.
Based on Istat 2018 data, 62.1 percent of young people between 18 and 34 yearssingle or single, lives in a family with at least one parent. This percentage is even higher in the South and in the islands (68.1 and 65.5 per cent) than the figure recorded in the North (about 57 per cent), with the Center representing an intermediate condition, but with a trend towards the result of the South.
This highlights a risk of observing a generation condemned to one downward revision of one's work and personal aspirations.
An ever-growing number of young people, especially from the South, are considering the possibility of leave one's region of origin or even Italy in order to improve their employment status.
And so in the year 2021 the southern regions continue to be those at the greatest risk of depletion of the youngest and most qualified resources due to the migratory phenomenon.
The young people of this time are studied, recalls Stefania Leone, in relation to the reduced expression of independence, autonomy and decision-making and for the inability to plan and build your own future. This has meant that, often, they were called, with a negative meaning, with expressions such as big babies, choosy and the like, on the other hand opening up profound questions regarding the reasons and the real measures of these attitudes and, contextually, the co-responsibility of adults.
We are inside a hybrid and we could say ambivalent society: in the post-industrial era, grappling with a heavy economic and socio-cultural crisis, young people from the South are projected towards the future and are confronted with a society that is no longer peasant but not even largely industrial, they denote a leap towards research and technology while living, in fact, in a society still dominated by bureaucracy and culturally by dependence on a welfare state, often finding themselves facing clientelistic dynamics that have never disappeared.
Francesco Del Pizzo himself, recalling the data from the 2017 Youth Report of the Toniolo Institute, underlines the dissatisfaction on the part of young people from the South with respect to their peers from the North, but also the co-present dynamicity e willingness to put on at stake to favor a positive change in one's destiny.
The young people of the South, like those of the North, show a vision of work aimed at security and the construction of family projects. However, the awareness that work also contemplates the dimension of self-realization, prestige and success is more alive in the south. The idea that professional identity is an important factor in defining thepersonal identity.
Furthermore, young southerners focus more on the present and, secondly, on building their own future. For them, the family it presents itself as a place of intimate fusion and conflict but remains, in any case, the symbolic unit of reference within the social system.
Their trust in almost all knowledge-based institutions persists: school, universityresearch places.
Still acceptable approval ratings refer to local administrations, such as Municipality e Italian Regions, while all the institutions most immediately attributable to a political dimension – parties politicians, Camera, Senate, Government national -, gather everywhere the highest levels of distrust, together with banking institutions, newspapers e social networks.
Furthermore, the share of young people is very consistent deeply distrusted, compared to those who instead have faith, in the next.
