Research Projects

Forced migration and labour market outcomes of Ukrainians in Italy 

The Centre for European Studies (CefES-DEMS) of the University of Milan-Bicocca and GSSI have initiated a project to investigate the extent of integration of Ukrainians to the Italian labour market.

For this aim the survey is disseminated, to which Ukrainian citizens aged 18 years or older currently residing in Italy since February 2022 are invited to respond by June 30, 2024.

Link to the survey: https://bit.ly/3sVElA4

Prin 2022 PNRR – SH1 Sector - Understanding changes in living and working environments for reducing health inequalities

Project  financed by the European Union – Next Generation EU – PRIN PNRR 2022-P20227EJEE

The aim of this project is improving the understanding on how environmental, organizational and personal factors interact to affect individual health. We will focus on specific settings: workplaces, neighborhoods, and homes . We will empirically investigate the changes in settings induced by the Covid pandemic and their impact on health inequality. Our empirical findings will be the starting point to propose policy recommendations.

MultiLocal - Multi dimensional inequality and optimization in a local perspective. 

Project  funded by Fondazione CARIPLO (2023)

This project will contribute by drawing new evidence for Italy for understanding and analyzing poverty and inequality among Italian young people using a multidimensional and local approach based on five dimensions:

1. education (including Early leavers from education and training, Participation in lifelong learning, Level of digital competence of students, Level of literacy);

2. material living standard (including income, housing condition);

3. health status; 

4. labour market participation (including youth employment, gender inequalities in average remuneration of employees, NEET status);

5. social connections and relationships (including also volunteering, meeting friends and relatives).

CITILab - Compound InequaliTIes and Labour market outsiders. The social investment policy agenda to empower long-term unemployed, disabled people and working women. 

Project  funded by Fondazione CARIPLO (2023)

CITILab addresses different dimensions of inequality related to job access and employment opportunities and quality, and analyses how these different dimensions intersect, cumulate, and overlap. By considering the additive nature of inequality, the project acknowledges that it is particularly severe and disadvantageous especially for certain groups. Among others, low skilled working mothers, people with disability and the long-term unemployed (cumulated with other characteristics, such as being over 50, low skilled, or with a migrant background) represent people who tend to be particularly vulnerable in the labour market. 

Inequality, Social Mobility & Local Public Goods (2021)

Project funded by the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies in Economics, Psichology and Social Sciences (CISEPS, UNIMIB)

This research project aims to link the analysis of inequality with other stictly related issues, such as the transmission of inequality across generations and the disparities in living standards between people located in different European regions.

The main topics are:

• Analysis of regional inequality in Europe focusing on specific aspects of methodology used to assess spatial inequality.

• Analysis of the stickiness of inter-generational links in terms of income, occupation, or education by either parametric or non-parametric approaches. 

• Analysis of public goods at the local level that are expected to have an impact on individuals and society as a whole. We consider a wide definition of public goods including tolerance, social cohesion, social capital in addition to more standard public goods, such as culture or air quality.

• Analysis of perceived inequality in Europe.

Addressing inequality and social exclusion for inclusive growth in the EU (2018)

Project funded by the Center for European Studies (CefES, UNIMIB)

Europe 2020 is the EU’s agenda for jobs and growth for the current decade. It emphasizes smart, sustainable and inclusive growth as a way to strengthen the EU economy and prepare its structure for the challenges of the next decade. The strategy strives to deliver high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion in the Member States while reducing the impact on the natural environment. For ensuring social cohesion, the strategy focuses on combating poverty and social exclusion so as to raise awareness and recognize the fundamental rights of people experiencing poverty and social exclusion, enabling them to live in dignity and take an active part in society. To do so, Member States need to: promote shared collective and individual responsibility in combating poverty and social exclusion; define and implement measures addressing the specific circumstances of groups at particular risk (e.g. one parent families, elderly, women, minorities, disabled and homeless); and fully deploy their social security and pension systems to ensure adequate income support and access to health.

The research group will initially focus on inequality and social exclusion with the aim to provide fresh empirical evidence to answer to the following questions: how big are spatial inequalities in Europe, and what has been happening to them? What does explain the levels and trends in spatial inequality? Then, the research group will focus on addressing inequality and social exclusion in specific groups at particular risk.

Multilevel governance and economic growth (2018)

Project funded by the Center for European Studies (CefES, UNIMIB)

The project aims to study the effects of expenditure decentralization on economic growth both theoretically and empirically.

The theoretical framework we aim to develop wants to be comprehensive of all possible monotonic and non-monotonic relationships between decentralization and economic growth, which have been found in the empirical studies.

The relationship between decentralized expenditure and economic growth will be empirically investigated for European countries. In the past decades, they have been involved in a common process of decentralization under the guidance of a common cultural value, that is, the subsidiarity principle, which is also one of the most important principles in the architecture of the European Union.

Gender & Religions (2016)

Gender & Religions is a survey among university students on religiosity and interreligious dialogue. It is being carried out in a number of Italian Universities (more than 5,000 questionnaires have been collected). 

This survey is part of an ongoing interdisciplinary research project carried out within the “Framework Convention (FC) Gender and Religions”. The FC, launched in 2016 by the University of Milano-Bicocca, is a confederation of 30 Italian Universities and nearly 25 Research Centers across Italy, which banded together to study, using an interdisciplinary perspective, how contemporary processes of change are affecting religious identities for women and men.