RISULTATI RICERCA

A Tijuana la barriera di confine eretta dal governo statunitense raggiunge la spiaggia, un’area frequentata dalla popolazione della città. Il testo propone un’analisi delle molteplici e variabili relazioni tra la "struttura spaziale" di confine, con particolare attenzione alla violenza spaziale esercitata, e alle rappresentazioni e pratiche che animano quel luogo. Emerge dunque come differenti forme di "manipolazione" e "rifunzionalizzazione" della barriera riescano a depotenziare la violenza spaziale esercitata.

Il saggio si propone di esaminare i limiti e le potenzialita’ che la rappresentanza sindacale dei lavoratori affronta nel tentativo di riordinarsi su scala transnazionale. Questo perche’ i fenomeni di de-nazionalizzazione generano disfunzioni ed ostacoli difficilmente eludibili da parte del sindacalismo. Partendo da queste premesse, il saggio discute il ruolo dei Comitati Aziendali Europei (CAE) quale meccanismo speciale di promozione e di sviluppo dell’azione sindacale a livello transnazionale mentre ne esamina le possibilita’ e i limiti di inserimento nell’area politica dell’articolazione tra il livello Europeo e quello nazionale o locale del sindacato. In questa sfera vengono esaminate le opportunita’ che il CAE offre per la creazione di forme di integrazione o networking internazionale della rappresentanza dei lavoratori, e vengono analizzate le forme di tale integrazione e gli effetti sulla creazione di uno spazio europeo per la rappresentanza, nonche’ vengono discusse le condizioni che possono favorirne o limitarne lo sviluppo.

During the 1990s outsourcing became an increasingly popular managerial strategy in both private and public sectors. Although the term is not always used with the same meaning, the basic definition of outsourcing for our purpose is a process whereby an organisation ceases to carry out internally various functions outside its ‘core’ activity and instead purchases the service or products concerned from outside parties operating under the same factory’s roof. The author, drawing on field research and secondary sources, argues that the analysis of outsourcing in Italy provides a critical re-examination of the ‘adversial’ union approach, typical of the other international experiences. In fact, the analysis demonstrates that Italian trade unions did not oppose the recent workplace restructuring practices. Nevertheless, she claims, outsourcing strongly affects collective bargaining arrangements and unions representatives by potentially leading to individuate an ambivalent framework for Italian workplace industrial relations. Whereas it provides to fragment the contractual working conditions of employees, outsourcing potentially weakens the capacity of organisation, representation and intervention of trade unions. The result has been, on one side the re-unification of the working conditions within the outsourced enterprises under the same sectoral collective agreement (metalworking sector) and, on the other side the reinforcement of the structures of horizontal representation by strengthening co-operation among trade union representatives of the main companies, outsourcer and subcontractor firms. By considering these results the paper will examine the Italian unions’ response to outsourcing in breadth. Finally, the attempt to evaluate trade unions opportunities to establish a social model on an international basis will be assessed through the examination of the challenges and opportunities different patterns of post-fordism have led to Italian unionism in the last twenty years.

Based on a research made in 2002 in Burkina Faso, the article establishes a connection between development co-operation and migration. With a study made on the migration situation of the country, particularly in the colony period, the text explains the situation of two different Burkina Faso savannas populations included in this exam: Nanoro and Pilimpikou. Both of them have similar culture and territory structure but their historic path was very different because of the access to developmental help, which was huge in the first case and non existent in the second one. How did these facts influence the migration of these two populations? In this case-study, the relationship between the help of development and the reduce of migration has been positive.

Il Programma di Formazione Permanente (PFP) "Introduzione all’approccio sistemico e agli interventi di tipo familiare nei servizi per la salute mentale" è stato realizzato nel periodo Settembre 2011 - Agosto 2014 dall’Associazione Ellenica per il Pensiero Sistemico e la Terapia Familiare (HESTAFTA) con il supporto economico della Fondazione "Stavros Niarchos" (SNF), all’interno del programma "Child Mental Health" coordinato dal Master in "International Medicine - Health Crises Management" dell’Università di Atene. I principali obiettivi del PFP comprendevano: offrire un’opportunità di formazione e supervisione ad operatori della salute mentale che lavorano nelle regioni periferiche e insulari della Grecia, dove le possibilità di formazione sono scarse o inesistenti; migliorare l’efficacia dei loro interventi, in particolare nei servizi psicosociali rivolti a bambini, adolescenti e alle loro famiglie, attraverso la formazione alle pratiche sistemiche di intervento psico-sociale; creare una rete di contatti con e fra gli operatori per facilitare la comunicazione, lo scambio di informazioni cliniche e il supporto professionale. Il periodo in cui è stato realizzato il PFP è coinciso con la crisi economica che affligge la Grecia dal 2009 e le sue gravi conseguenze, quali le forti riduzioni alla spesa pubblica e in particolare alle spese riguardanti la salute mentale, la riduzione del numero di operatori e della conseguente capacità dei servizi di assorbire la domanda di aiuto, gli aggravati e più numerosi problemi psicosociali presentati dalla popolazione come conseguenza dell’aumentato stress. Il PFP è stato costantemente monitorato nelle varie fasi di realizzazione da un programma di valutazione sia interna che esterna, utilizzando metodi sia quantitativi che qualitativi, con risultati positivi e il raggiungimento dei principali obiettivi.

This contribution deals with the overlapping between productive and reproductive spaces concerning the situation of Romanian citizens working and living in the Italian biggest greenhouses district, located in South-Eastern Sicily. In the last few years, Romanian farmworkers have been asked to reside within or nearby the agricultural companies, producing an arrangement that could be defined as a dormitory labor regime. This spacial location of the workforce allows the employers to shrink the labor costs, although forcing migrants into a condition of isolation and seclusion. Thanks to the data collected through an ethnographic research (participant observation, shadowing, semi-structured interviews), the article provides some reflection on these dynamics, analyzing mainly: (1) the implications of the recruitment strategies opting for couples of workers; (2) the processes of appropriation and re-signification of life and work spaces undertaken by migrant farmworkers.

In the last decade, several sectors of the Italian labour market have witnessed a rise in conflictual union activities carried out mostly by subcontracted migrant workers. Taking two grassroots unions in the North Italian meat processing sector as case studies (SICobas and ADLCobas), this paper investigates why and how migrant workers organise themselves through rank-and-file unions. In particular, the paper aims at understanding whether and how migrant workers’ mobility power interplays with and influences their associational power, shedding light on the nexus between labour mobility and its mobilisation. After illustrating how grassroots unions develop in the Italian context, the paper analyses how migrant workers enhance their mobility power through rank-and-file unions and how these unions, in turn, utilise members’ mobility as a resource to broaden their organisations. In conclusion, the paper argues that the presence of a highly mobile labour force does not weaken and could even strengthen mobilisations. Consequently, mobility power can be conceptualised not only as an individual strategy but also as a collective resource.

Throughout this article, the author deals with the topic of the moral economy of the informal labor market, focusing on the greenhouses' sector in the province of Ragusa (Sicily). The ethnographic experience as a participant observer in one of the richest districts of South Italian agriculture, helped to reconstruct the interplay emerging between the State, the entrepreneurs and the Italian and migrants laborers, harnessed in this quasi-informal system of production. The case of "fake agricultural workers", namely of people fictitiously hired in agriculture in order to receive the unemployment subsidy, represents an interesting example, since it allowed to scrutinize some of the categories, both cognitive and normative, that constitute the "moral order" of the agricultural local labor market. The author, thus, through several empirical examples, tried to rep to some relevant questions, like what is deem to be "legitimate" or "illegitimate" in the economic realm, what is constructed as "convenient" or "valuable" and how does ethnicity play a role in defining the "appropriateness" of individuals’ coping strategies.