General information
Unimib has been established in 1998, simultaneously to the birth of the second state university of Milan, that is to say the University of Milano Bicocca. It is made up almost entirely of sociologists, though some economists and political philosophers have recently joined it. Currently 44 official scholars belong to it, of which 17 are full Professors, 12 associate Professors, and 15 researchers. The common commitment of scholars working at MBDSSR is to carry out theoretically informed empirical studies, on the topics described in the next section, using advanced quantitative and qualitative social research techniques. The 2003 research budget of MBDSSR amounts to about € 2,7 millions. More than two fifth of the above funds come from the EU and about in the same proportion they derive from either MIUR (i.e. the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Scientific Research) or CNR (i.e. the Italian Science Foundation).
Research programme
Main current research themes include:
- social mobility and social inequalities, linked to gender, generation and class, in school attendance, employment statuses, occupational destinations, social capital and, more generally, main events (such as transition from school to work, marriage, parenthood, retirement) of individual life courses. Most of the analyses on this theme are comparative in character and based on longitudinal datasets deriving from both national panels and ECHP.
- labour market dynamics; this theme comprises studies regarding: (a) changes of legal, contractual and de facto regulations of the Italian labour market and their effects on employment relations with specific reference to atypical contracts and black jobs; (b) studies on migrations from non EU countries and their impact on formal and informal economy, regular and black jobs; © analyses of the variations over time and across countries of unemployment patterns with specific reference to the effects of gender, generation, occupational class and area of residence. The above listed subjects are studied by means of both standard quantitative analyses and (mainly in the case of migrants) qualitative techniques such as case studies, participant observations, focus groups.
- welfare systems and policy measures; this includes both general studies on recent retrenching processes of the welfare system in EU countries and more sectional analyses regarding the social consequences of the Italian state interventions in several fields such as poverty, unemployment, family, pensions, and health. It also comprises analyses on local social policies, that is to say interventions of local authorities intended to integrate state provisions, or to make up for the lack of them, at town, provincial, and regional level. The above mentioned studies are based on both qualitative and quantitative surveys.
- territorial and urban studies; this subject comprises analyses on: (a) patterns of territorial governance; (b) processes of territorial mobility, including daily commuting, both between urban and extra-urban areas and within them; © life patterns in urban areas; (d) social consequences of processes of urbanisation or de-urbanisation; and (e) building up of large datasets for secondary analyses regarding changes over time in settlement patterns.
- cultural processes; under this label are grouped studies regarding: (a) changes over time in collective systems of values and norms at societal and group (such as young people, women, elderly people) level; and (b) social relations between ethnic groups and processes of cultural integration of non EU migrants. The first topic is based mainly on quantitative surveys, while the second one relies mainly on qualitative social research.
International networks and collaboration
Unimib is a member of the European Consortium of Sociological Research, Europanel Users Network, the Inter-Universities Consortium for Political and Social Research. Moreover it hosts two international Ph.D. programmes. The first one, called “European Territorial Studies”, is arranged in cooperation with the London School of Economics, the Institute de Sciences Politiques of Paris, and the Humboldt Universität of Berlin. The second one is called “Quality of Life in the Information Society” and is organised together with the Wien University of Technology, the Humboldt Universität of Berlin, the London School of Economics, the University of Nottingham, the University of Oulu, and the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. Finally, several of its members are involved in international research projects such as: a) the European Social Survey; b) Dynamics of Social Change in Europe (DYNSOC, SERD-1999-00185); c) Family and transitions in Europe (FATE, HPSE-CT-2001-0079); d) The political economy of migration in an integrating Europe (PENINT, HPSE-CT-2001-0059); d) Employment and women’s studies: the impact of women’s studies training on women’s employment in Europe (EWSE, HPSE-CT-2001-0082); e) Urban Europe, between identity and change (UrbEurope, HRN-CT-2002-00227).