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The gap recorded in Italy during the last fifty years between the rate at which the population and the total number of families have grown is the most meaningful marker of morphological change occurred in family structures in Italy. The path ticked by the census shows interesting symmetries and divergences for the people and families. The second half of last century was a period of emphasis on growth for both, followed by a phase of rapid deceleration and, finally, a hint of a recovery rate of increase during the decade between the last censuses. The well-known phenomenon of "atomization" of family structures (ie families more numerous but smaller and smaller) was not uniform throughout the country, in particular, in the last two decades of the century trends seems to align but sometimes at levels substantially different. In this work the changes in intensity of the various family ties are read through a double key of interpretation: the increase in number of coexisting generations and the decrease of the frequency of their cohabitation under the same roof. These changes are also observed through the steps that each person goes through in the course of individual life and family. In summary, the changes that have affected the Italian family in recent decades seem to connect to the action of changing socio-cultural context of local, national and international levels on the family life cycle. The increasing number of families and their small average size testify the emergence of new demographic realities, the decline in fertility the increase of survival, which became structural in Italy and that now seems to add to the rapid and intense change caused by the rise of immigration from abroad. In the Italy of the XXI century the institution of the family does not seem to have lost that centrality in the life stories that are typically based on the sharing of a consolidated system of values, both at the individual level and for the society as a whole. In conclusion, it is

EC Regulation No. 2204/2002 aims at better workability for a wide range of people with some kind of disadvantages in the labor market. However, a similar taxonomy of structural predictors of disadvantages must be adopted with caution, for three reasons: a) they do not work additively, on they contrary they interweave with each other in the form of INUS-causes; b) their effect is not the construction of unidimensional states of exclusion, but rather of multidimensional “situations”; c) these situations are today embedded in demographic and socioeconomic frames that are radically changing, and they are taking the form of “new social risks”, which in turn are marked by a sort of stabilization of (traditionally temporary) critical states in the life-course. This is the case of atypical employment. Today its ability to introduce people into stable work careers is the core of a huge split in the pertinent debate: some people strongly support flexible jobs as virtuous entry ports, just as other people denigrate them as job traps. Empirical evidence up to now, concerning the Italian market, is limited and not convergent. One dominant mechanism does not exist in the atypical Italian labor market: both mechanisms coexist, and where the entrapment works, the flexibility can produce in young adults a loss of ability to plan the choices of family-formation. We need to investigate under the surface of unidimensional analysis, and to analyze the geography of atypical work in terms of more complex “syndromes”. Exploring a database of subcontract workers in Lombardy, the article evidences some emerging INUS-causes of stabilization into a state of precariousness: women & divorced, males & breadwinners, over 45 years & with a degree. All these situations have in common a specific mechanism of entrapment: Watzlawick et al define them “paradoxical situations”, from which there is no escape, whatever action is taken, because of something that is an intrinsic part of the situation itself.

Illegality has always been a core topic in the debate on foreign presence in Italy, but rarely it dealt with the necessary awareness about its real consistence, the main structural features and the different impact that it has taken (and still assumes) at local level. Apart from the recurrent -and often ideological and instrumental-assessments from disparate sources, we can say that, while in the early 90's there was in Italy almost one illegal every two migrants, towards the end of the same decade the proportion declined to about one in four and after the regularization started in late 1998 (and finished about two years later) it can be assumed that the incidence of illegality was further lowered till the "physiological" level of 100-150 thousand units. It doesn’t mean, however, that since then the phenomenon of illegal presence has stopped to these low levels. After the reductive effects of the regularization were exhausted, the irregular component has in fact taken to grow consistently, even for the attractive force arising from the prospect of a new "amnesty", as just discussed at the beginning of 2001. In fact, at time immediately preceding the last regularization of 2002 it was assumed from a minimum of 541 thousand to a maximum of 730 000 illegal foreigners living in Italy, within a total foreign population whose estimations range from 2.2 million to 2.5 million units, of which 90% coming from the so called “high migratory pressure countries (HMPc’s)” and 700-750 thousand referred to the subset of the main three countries: Morocco, Albania and Romania. As regards the legality path of foreign migrants living in Italy, the analysis recently carried out with reference to outcomes of the last three regularization since the '90s show that the vast majority of beneficiaries of these measures were never been in possession of a valid residence permit. This leads to say that the amnesties occurred in our country have normally focused on different individuals from time

The paper is addressed to problem of performing a statistical survey of a group of individuals present in a certain population, when information about the complete list of members is missing or partially unknown. This problem is particularly relevant in immigration analysis, where many of the individuals are possibly illegal migrants and therefore not formally registered or accounted for in official statistics. We propose a sample method that integrates information provided by specific surveys and subjective knowledge available to the experimenter about the geo-social reality of interest.

The fact that the people of foreign immigrants who experienced the hard and painfully administrative procedure in order to get a legal status, is still without an adequate characterization using traditional statistical sources, does not mean that it is entirely in shadow. There are, in fact, some attempts to develop interesting paths of knowledge, including activating and enhancing alternative to the official statistical system. An approach in this sense is precisely what underlies the present work, whose main goal is to provide a report about the population of regularized and to compare its image and the elements of differentiation that may distinguish it from those who have always been regular. On the problem of the sources, the statistical material that will be referenced here is largely due to the surveys conducted by the ISMU Foundation in the framework of the Observatory on the foreign presence in Lombardy; an original research field that started in 1996 within the city of Milan and progressively was extended to other provinces of Lombardy up to and including, since 2001, the whole region. The high sample size, about 8000 cases annually at the regional level, and the statistical methodology that characterize the data collection (the Centre Sampling Method) ensure the representativeness as to the corresponding universe that, however limited, is nevertheless related to the region that is a leader as regards foreign migration in Italy. A region that, according to the latest assessment (Blangiardo 2004), collects about 600,000 individuals from the so called “high migratory pressure countries (HMPc’s)”. This paper, despite the above limits of a local vision of the universe object of interest, takes in consideration and enhances a rich set of unusual information concerning the people of regularized, so that can offer some original insights that can help us to escape from the trap of recurring stereotypes that too often clouds the perception of a reality continuously

The ‘classical’ interpretations appear to be inadequate for explaining the very low fertility in southern Europe. The volume “Strong Family and Low Fertility: a Paradox”, edited by G. Dalla Zuanna and G.A. Micheli, contains two different possible interpretations, which, though departing from similar premises, reach quite distinct conclusions. Micheli’s interpretation, in particular, supplements the anthropological continuity of the strong-tie models with an alternative way of interpreting the change, whereby the normal process of rational decision-making is superimposed by mechanisms which are “completely or largely based on normative/affective considerations, not merely with regard to selection of goals, but also of means” (Etzioni, 1988). The author advances the hypothesis that in order to understand the shifts, which have marked Italian demography at the end of the twentieth century, it is necessary to descend beneath the surface-crust of the processes of rational decision-making and dig down into our deep psychology. Indeed, there are increasing signs of a growing hesitation (or fear) among the younger generations when they are faced with irreversible choices. Ginsborg (1998) maintains “very often, it has not been the lack of a sense of responsibility, but on the contrary an excess of it which has been the main contribution towards the decline of the rate of fertil-ity”. What meaning should we attribute to this increased sense of responsibility? Is it really a sign of greater control over one’s own choices, or is it perhaps sometimes the sign of a loss of the ability to “let go”, to expose one’s own actions to the risk of consequences which cannot be entirely controlled? The author certainly doesn’t deny the existence of a broad range of structural factors - economic, sociological and anthropological -, which is decisive in stimulating the rational assumption of ‘parsimonious’ choices. Rather, he questions the self-sufficiency of the dominant psycho-economic key