Italian Young People Coping with the Consequences of Economic Crisis : an Intersectional Analysis

The aim of this article is to investigate how the current economic crisis is affecting the daily lives and social positions of young people in Italy. On the one hand, starting from analysis of more general statistical evidence on the worsening situation in the labour market, we conduct an intersectional analysis – both intercategorical and intracategorical – of some indicators in order to shed light on educational and gender differences. On the other hand, we present the results of qualitative research conducted on the experiences and representations of the economic crisis among young people with low or high cultural capital in the city of Milan. The central hypothesis of our work is that ‘the crisis’ is not just a temporary economic conjuncture; it is also a social phenomenon reshaping the social positions of individuals in both structural and subjective terms. Showing how the crisis is affecting different young people in very different ways, the article investigates both structural evidence and subjective interpretations of the crisis.