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This article presents – in connection with the following article – the first results of a Prin-Miur project on issues related to the representation of young qualified professionals. Our main aim is to outline the forms and workings of organizations representing and protecting workers experiencing increasing precariousness, but at the same time unable to express a clear request of representation. The article is based on the analysis of 16 organizations in the area of Milan, and tries to show their organizational characteristics, their mobilization and consent strategies and their relationships among them.

This paper, ideally complementing the previous article, addresses the demand for representation among highly qualified young professionals and it is based on the analysis of interviews conducted in the metropolitan area of Milan. The interviewees rarely refer to common rights and needs and only a weak perception and consciousness of universal right seems to emerge; protection and representation issues are unevenly perceived by the interviewees. In the article we describe different profiles of the young professionals: some of them conceive rights as individual achievement; others aspire to specific forms of protection and support within the professional sector; others more radically claim rights and protections.