Gabriele Ballarino (University of Milano)
Paolo Barbieri (University of Trento)
Filippo Gioachin (University of Trento)
Social class has been for long time regarded as a vanishing concept – or as a “zombie concept” – increasingly useless to understand the “new” changes of western societies. The rhetoric of the “end of class” gained broad consensus in the last decades among sociologists – notwithstanding the rising tide of income inequality. A different storytelling focuses on the so called “middle class crisis”: this idea of the “vanishing middle”, originally from the US, got credit both within the public discourse and also among social scientists and economic sociologists. Of course, the security and prosperity of the middle class – the backbone of modern societies, however defined – is essential for economic growth and socio-political stability. However, the narratives about the “endangered middle class”, especially in response to macro-level shocks and societal changes such as the spreading of technology and globalization, have tended to obscure the wider issue of the distribution of inequalities and the persisting stratification of social risks within post-industrial societies. While economic research has given some, quite limited, hints of polarization, as sociologists we know that opportunities and life-course economic/social rewards stem from individuals’ occupational position. Issues such as power, privileges, and identities are tightly linked to the underlying social structure, and although societal changes are influencing life and work trajectories, the underlying structural mechanisms of social inequality are expected to persist.
Within our discipline, though, some perspectives challenge this vision and portray a modernity (and related transformations) leading us towards an inevitable erosion of social classes, with a “democratization” of social and economic risks spreading throughout all societal strata that also reach traditionally “safe” middle (and upper) classes. Advocates of an “individualized” and “class-free” society now inductively describe the contemporary stratification as based on cultural belonging, tastes and consumption. Against this backdrop, the question about the “crisis” or the “squeeze” of the middle class intrinsically becomes one about the relevance of the occupational-based structure in explaining differences in post-industrial individuals’ life courses, among which the ability to shelter against economic disadvantages and social risks.
In this session, we thus invite contributions and reflections on the concept and measurement of class and empirical works on the occupational/class stratification of job, income, and wealth inequalities along working careers, as well as about economic changes such 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 about the unfolding of individuals’ life courses and 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 mechanisms originating (new forms of) inequalities or as moderators of pre-existing ones. We also welcome motivated cross-sectional analyses of the specific functioning of class/inequality mechanisms. We will particularly favour contributions that assess the structure of inequalities in a diachronic perspective, thus incorporating structural and institutional changes along periods, birth cohorts, and over the work-life course. Another important aspect is the intersection between social classes and other ascriptive features such as, for instance, gender and ethnic background. Even if these topics are generally addressed through quantitative approaches, we are also interested in receiving qualitative contributions as long as they are theory-driven.
Submissions and presentations could be either in Italian or in English.