Research Areas
Social Care
Care needs, practices and policies have undergone profound changes in recent decades. Caring for children, for persons with disability and for the frail elderly interacts with major social, demographic and economic transformations, including female employment,...
Poverty
The fight against poverty is the foundation stone of any system of social protection anywhere in the world. Structural trends, such as the rise of work insecurity and the decline of the nuclear family, have caused poverty to increase. Moreover, recent upheavals,...
Social risks and inequalities
Global inequalities between countries may have diminished in recent decades, as a result of the rise of China, India and other formerly low-income economies, but within many countries, especially in the US, Europe and other advanced economies, inequalities have...
Housing
Housing policy in most of European cities has to deal with rising house prices, shrinking rental markets, reduced social provision, and greater social inequalities in access to affordable housing. Housing has thus come to require, for a large share of population, a...
Urban Studies
In recent years, European cities have increasingly become objects of social research. On the one hand, the effects of economic crises have been particularly intense in urban and metropolitan contexts. On the other hand, local governments have had to cope with fewer...
Local Welfare
Local welfare systems have come to the fore of welfare studies in recent years for a variety of reasons. To start with, countries like Italy have always featured significant geographical differentiation and local historical, social, economic, political and...