Andrea Bellini

This paper examines the relationship between working conditions, professional expectations, and collective representation in Italian public healthcare. Drawing on a survey of 936 healthcare workers in the Latium region, it shows how formal employment stability coexists with organizational constraints, limited autonomy, and weak recognition. The findings identify a form of work misalignment linking three dimensions. Working conditions are marked by compressed wages, constrained autonomy, and limited skill utilization. Expectations are highly convergent, centring on income, recognition, and improved working conditions. Trade union orientations are closely tied to these issues, with strong support for contractual intervention, but also for competence, proximity to workers, and services. The paper contributes to the sociology of professions by showing that current transformations are not only about hybridization between professional and organizational logics, but also about the limits of organizational arrangements in sustaining professional work, and the growing role of employment-based forms of representation.

This article examines the evolving relationship between self-employed creative workers and trade unions, exploring the reconfiguration of collective engagement during the COVID-19 pandemic within a specific case study. Using a mixed-methods approach, we first analyse two decades (2002–2018) of European Social Survey data across different models of capitalism to provide an overview of unionisation trends among creative workers. We then integrate findings with qualitative insights from an Italian case study, focusing on workers’ changing strategies. While Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) contextualises institutional constraints to unionisation, Crozier’s Strategic Actor Theory (SAT) highlights worker agency in responding to them. Drawing primarily on SAT, we argue that, despite institutional barriers and occupational fragmentation, the pandemic created opportunities for workers to engage with unions, recognising their lobbying power in shaping emergency employment protection and income support. This study contributes to the debate on union revitalisation by showing how workers’ agency influences collective strategies in changing labour market conditions.

Two years after Erik Olin Wright’s death, this article rereads one of his most famous works, Class Counts. This book, published in 1997, can be considered at the same time a contemporary classic of scientific Marxism and the manifest of neo-Marxist class analysis. The objectives of the article are manifold. Firstly, it contextualizes the author’s theoretical contribution in his biography, emphasizing his complicated relationship with sociology as a Marxist. Then, it focuses on the book’s specific contribution in terms of conceptual work, also looking at the theoretical implications of the empirical results. Finally, it reflects on the resilience of the heuristic capacity of Wright’s categories to understand social inequalities in contemporary society.

Firenze University Press - Università degli Studi di Firenze - Crisi, malessere, frammentazione sociale sono temi ricorrenti nelle rappresentazioni dei ceti medi. Il volume, basato sui risultati di un’indagine sulla professione forense realizzata con il contributo del Consiglio dell’Ordine degli Avvocati di Firenze, approfondisce la questione collocandosi in un filone di studi che ha ripreso vigore all’interno del dibattito sociologico italiano e internazionale. Toccando una pluralità di temi e avvalendosi di metodi d’indagine misti, la ricerca ha permesso di verificare come situazioni occupazionali diverse si traducano in una distribuzione diseguale delle chances di vita e in differenti atteggiamenti verso la professione, la politica e la vita sociale, consentendo altresì di esplorare il ruolo svolto dall’avvocatura nei processi di cambiamento.

Firenze University Press - Università degli Studi di Firenze - Quella dei ceti medi è una questione che nell’ultimo decennio ha registrato una ripresa di interesse nell’opinione pubblica, soprattutto alla luce delle problematiche connesse con la transizione a un capitalismo flessibile e con l’avvento della crisi. Nel dibattito scientifico, essa è presente sin dagli albori della sociologia moderna come un fenomeno difficile da inquadrare dal punto di vista teorico e ancor più da indagare empiricamente. A partire da queste premesse, il volume offre una rilettura in chiave critica di autori e contributi classici e contemporanei, incentrando l’analisi sul ruolo svolto dagli stessi ceti medi nell’ambito dei processi di cambiamento e cercando di far emergere le inter-connessioni tra le dimensioni di struttura, identità e azione.