Delayed Graduation and Overeducation in Italy: A Test of the Human Capital Model Versus the Screening Hypothesis

Social Indicators Research - Exploiting the human capital versus screening hypothesis frameworks, this paper studies the link between delayed graduation and overeducation, and their effect on...     

Temporal Dynamics Linking Aspects of Parent Monitoring with Early Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

This longitudinal study examined the covariation between parents' use of control and solicitation, youth willingness to self-disclose to parents, and youth antisocial behavior from ages 13 to 14. Structural equation analyses were conducted on a combined sample of Italian (N  =  152) and French Canadian (N  =  151) adolescents. Analyses tested for longitudinal cross-lagged effects while controlling for stability and all concurrent associations. Although bivariate correlations showed consistent associations among these constructs, both concurrently and over one year, SEM results revealed virtually no cross-lagged effects, after controlling for concurrent associations and stability. These findings suggest that the actual causal effects of parenting and youth behavior may best be conceptualized as occurring in the moment, rather than over extended periods of time. Results also showed that parental control and solicitation demonstrated very different associations with youth antisocial behavior, and should therefore be considered separately for research and prevention.     

Best Practice Options: Albania

The Cooperative Efforts to Manage Emigration (CEME) site visit to Italy and Albania – organized in cooperation with the Centro Studi di Politica Internazionale (CeSPI), an Italian independent research institute – took place in June 2002. Albania is a country of 3.1 million people with a GDP of $4.1 billion that switched in the early 1990s, after 45 years of communism, from economic autarky to a peculiar form of market economy, and experienced some of the world’s highest emigration rates in the 1990s. Some 600,000 to 700,000 Albanians, or almost one–fourth of Albanians, and half of Albanian professionals, emigrated. As a result, the labour force is only 38 per cent of the population, versus 50 per cent in most industrial countries (UNDP, 1996, 2000). The major destinations of Albanian migrants in the 1990s were Greece, which had 400,000 to 600,000 Albanians in 2002, and Italy, which had 144,000 legal residents and probably some tens of thousands illegals at the end of 2001. 1 The Albanian Government estimates that about half of the Albanians in Greece are legal residents. There are also about 100,000 Albanians in Switzerland, the UK, Germany, and other Western European countries.
Many Albanians have become legal residents of Greece and Italy as a result of regularization–legalization programmes. Albania is also a transit point for third country nationals attempting to reach the rest of Europe via Albania. Of particular interest to the CEME members were efforts by the Italian and Albanian governments to cooperate in managing the flows of Albanian and transit migrants. When the CEME visit was made, Albania was experiencing rapid, yet unbalanced economic growth as a result of $615 million in remittances from Albanians abroad (estimates: Bank of Albania annual report, 2001), and aid from the European Union (EU) and other sources. The spending of remittances and aid has fuelled a building boom, but there was no clear sense of how Albania would use the window of opportunity opened by remittances and aid to develop a viable economy. The optimistic scenario is that remittances and investments from Albanians abroad will produce an economic take off based on value–added food production and tourism in the “Switzerland of the Balkans”. The pessimistic scenario is that corruption and divided government will prevent the development of a successful economic strategy, and that low wages, high unemployment, and inadequate services such as health care and education will prompt the continued emigration of young and educated Albanians. Potential best practices include: joint Italian–Albanian marine patrols to discourage smuggling and trafficking in small “fast boats”; Italy granting Albania at least 6,000 work visas a year to publicize that there is a legal way to work in Italy, helping to discourage illegal migration; and bilateral and international assistance to enable Albania to develop laws and institutions to deal with foreigners transiting Albania, and foreigners requesting asylum in Albania. Albania does not, on the other hand, appear to be a best practice in managing the use of remittances to aid economic development. Although remittances play an important role in basic subsistence and construction of housing, there have been fewer efforts to encourage investment of these funds in infrastructure or productive activities. The banking system needs substantial reform to become a venue for transfer of remittances and source of credit for enterprise development. Albania would benefit from a more systematic examination of the lessons learned in other countries about the investment of remittances for economic development.     

Schengen's Soft Underbelly? Irregular Migration and Human Smuggling across Land and Sea Borders to Italy

La migration illégale à destination de l'Italie ou passant par ce pays est généralement associée dans l'esprit des gens à l'image de centaines, voire de milliers de migrants traversant la Méditerranée entassés dans de vieux rafiots se maintenant tout juste à flot. On considère souvent que les traversées de ce type sont la preuve de l'existence de cartels criminels qui seraient structurés hiérarchiquement, centralisés, extrêmement bien organisés et actifs au niveau mondial. Le seul problème avec de telles idées reçues est qu'elles ne concordent absolument pas avec les faits dont on dispose et n'ont pas grand chose à voir avec la réalité concrète des systèmes de migration illégale. Cette étude passe en revue un certain nombre de dossiers de tribunaux italiens concernant diverses organisations qui opèrent aussi bien au travers des frontières terrestres que maritimes. Elle montre comment de telles organisations opèrent en tenant compte de diverses spécificités locales et contraintes structurelles.     

Societal Metabolism and Multiple-Scale Integrated Assessment: Empirical Validation and Examples of Application

This paper presents empirical data to validate two points. (1) An integrated analysis of societal metabolism bridges an economic view of changes in socioeconomic systems with a biophysical representation of them. To obtain this check, it compares a biophysical indicator of development BEP with 24 traditional indicators of material economic development. The comparison covers a sample of 107 countries of the world, comprising more than 90% of the total world population (year 1993). (2) The concept of societal metabolism is useful to make biophysical analysts aware of constraints implied by economic viability and to make economic analysts aware of constraints implied by biophysical viability. To prove this point three practical examples of misunderstanding in the field of sustainability analysis are discussed.     

Play and learn: Children's agency through the COVID-19 pandemic in Mozambique

Social distancing, one of the measures adopted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, profoundly impacted on the lives of children. The consequences were, however, not homogenous. By focusing on the daily practices of 41 Mozambican children aged 3–10, we consider how differences in socioeconomic backgrounds led children to respond to the social restrictions in ways that made sense to them. Inspired by Abebe (2019), we identify how the interruptions of daily routines enabled specific instances of agency on children's part. These, we argue, produce new forms of continuity.