Sessione 14 – Working life course, social stratification and the accumulation of (dis)advantage

Coordinatori: Marco Albertini (Università di Bologna), Gabriele Ballarino (Università di Milano La Statale), Paolo Barbieri (Università di Trento), Filippo Gioachin (Università di Trento)

Some thirty years after the premature proclamation of the death of social classes, the interest in social stratification, along its various dimensions, is back at the center of scholars’ agenda – also as a consequence of macro-level inequality-generating shocks such as the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, differently from the past, researchers are more systematically considering social stratification along its various dimensions: occupational social class, education, income and wealth. The economic conditions of occupational classes derive from the social relations attached to specific work and market positions – also at the organizational and firm level; they are permeable to institutional arrangements and structural changes and, next, are the consequence of both individuals’ and family linked working-life courses. In the last decades, Western countries witnessed important structural and institutional transformations: the delocalization and off-shoring of labour-intensive productions; the significant process of technological change and the progressive automatization of both traditionally blue- and white-collar tasks, with the consequent impact on the structure of labour demand (skill-biased and routine-task biased technological change) and the related remuneration; the labour market deregulation and its inequality consequences across different birth-cohorts. Furthermore, economic inequalities between occupations have intensified in times of crisis. Side by the recent pandemic emergency, the finance and debts crisis of the 90s and late 2000 deepened old and news social cleavages, and in such economic downturns occupations revealed their (in)security against socioeconomic risks. Within this turmoil in the macro-economic and institutional context, it emerged even more clearly the essential role of individuals’ and families’ working biographies in compensating (or amplifying) the consequences of socio-economic change on the structure of social stratification.

This session invites empirical contributions on the occupational/class stratification of job, income, and wealth inequalities along working careers, as well as studies on the social consequences of such economic changes (as the differential exposure to job and economic insecurity, in-work poverty risk; social exclusion and various forms of labour market discriminations). We expect to receive longitudinal enquiries of the unfolding of individuals careers either from one (or few) specific country/ies or of comparative nature. We pose particular interest in the interaction between the individual structural conditions and (changes in) the institutional arrangements; the role of institutions as moderators of economic and technological shocks side by their relevance as mechanisms originating (new forms of) inequalities. We also welcome motivated cross-sectional findings as well as qualitative papers analyzing the specific functioning of social inequality mechanisms between and within social groups and populations. We will particularly favor contributions that assess the structure of inequalities in a diachronic perspective, thus incorporating changes along periods, birth cohorts, and over the work-life course. Another important aspect is the intersection between individuals’ occupations with other ascriptive features such as, for instance, social origin, gender, and ethnic background.

Even if these topics are generally addressed through quantitative approaches, we are interested in receiving qualitative contributions as long as they are theory-driven. Submissions and presentations could be either in Italian or in English.

Contatti coordinatori:  Marco Albertini (marco.albertini2@unibo.it)
Gabriele Ballarino (gabriele.ballarino@unimi.it)
Paolo Barbieri (paolo.barbieri@unitn.it)
Filippo Gioachin (ilippo.gioachin@unitn.it)

Posted in Uncategorized.