Inside/Out : storie di precarietà nell’università italiana

Our contribution focuses on precariousness as experienced in the research sector. The article firstly offers a theoretical framework for precariousness, conceptualised as an interweaving and a co-construction of working and existential conditions. We then describe the most salient regulatory aspects of the academic labour market in Italy, in order to contextualize our research findings within the Italian university system. The research was conducted between 2014 and 2015 in two departments situated in the northeast of the country, the first belonging to the STEM field and the second to SSH disciplines. Thirty-two interviews were conducted with postdoctoral research fellows who, at the time of the research, worked, or had recently ended their collaboration, within the two departments under study. The section dedicated to the presentation of findings is focused firstly on the issue of invisibility of precarious researchers, declined both in terms of gender differences, and of the different level of recognition of postdocs’ working activities in the STEM compared to the SSH department. Secondly, attention is paid to the status of postdocs, on their complicated positioning between formal and informal work and on their substantial exclusion from social protection. In the concluding section, our contribution put in dialogue the individual experiences analysed within the case study with recent movements developed at the national level by precarious researchers, which focus precisely on a collective claim about the issues of recognition of work and access to welfare.