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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.

Il paper presenta i primi risultati di un progetto Prin (2009) su Giovani e deficit della rappresentanza: trasformazioni del lavoro e nuovi rischi sociali a Milano, con due obiettivi fondamentali che strutturano lo stesso paper. Innanzitutto, vengono esplorati i mutamenti dell'offerta di rappresentanza a favore di lavoratori non standard ad elevata qualificazione a Milano, in considerazione della forte presenza, sia quantitativa che qualitativa, di organizzazioni di rappresentanza di tipo professionale o comunque rivolte a lavoratori impiegati con contratti non standard. In secondo luogo, il paper si propone di indagare quale se domanda di rappresentanza esprimono questi lavoratori una a fronte del processo di crescente individualizzazione della condizione occupazionale.

An anomalous polystyrene gel was obtained during the copper-catalyzed “activators regenerated by electron transfer” “atom transfer radical polymerization” (ARGET ATRP) of styrene at 60–70 °C, using ascorbic acid/Na2CO3 as the reducing system and EtOAc/EtOH as the solvent mixture. The result is remarkable since no branching nor cross-linking reagents were added to the reaction mixture and their formation in situ was excluded. The anomalous PS branching, at the origin of the phenomenon, requires a generic bifunctional initiator and is mechanistically bound to termination reactions between bifunctional macroinitiators. As a matter of fact, the branching/cross-linking phenomenon loses intensity, or even disappears, under reaction conditions that cause the built-up of CuII or increase the chain polymerization rate. The temperature is also a critical variable since no branching was observed for temperatures higher than 90 °C. We believe that the route toward gelation starts with a controlled chain polymerization of styrene from the bifunctional initiator, soon integrated by a step-growth polymerization due to radical coupling of the terminal units. The progressive decrease in the number of chains and free radicals in the reaction mixture should make more and more probable the intramolecular coupling between the C−Cl ends of the remaining long and entangled chains, producing a polycatenane network. [Figure not available: see fulltext.]

This article looks at the multifaceted precariousness of independent professionals through a qualitative analysis based in the urban area of Milan (Italy). It supports the hypothesis that at a more advanced stage of independent professionals' careers, the analysis of precariousness as a market risk can be enriched by adding the concept of ‘entrapment’ in vulnerable working paths and working and living conditions to the definition of poor occupational careers. Entrapment can be considered as the long-lasting condition of a large and weak part of young-adult independent professionals beyond the first stages of their careers. Our fieldwork confirms the widespread fragmentation of careers and increasing difficulties for young professionals to improve their positions due to structural economic and organisational changes. Four career dynamics of independent professionals emerge from the qualitative analysis – successful, dynamic, entrapped and temporarily interrupted. Career strategies play a major role in determining successful outcomes, but social relations are confirmed as also crucially important for job success, providing professional networks, welfare support and ‘local professional integration’.

Importanti cambiamenti sociali, economici e demografici stanno trasformando i modelli di riproduzione sociale e di regolazione del mercato del lavoro. Nella ricerca sociologica non è stata prestata sufficiente attenzione alla variabilità territoriale con la quale tali mutamenti si manifestano a livello locale. L’articolo si sofferma sull’analisi del mutamento sociale in cinque aree urbane (Milano, Firenze, Roma, Napoli e Bari), considerando le donne come attori chiave dei processi di trasformazione. Utilizzando i dati provenienti da un’indagine campionaria sulle 5 aree metropolitane indicate, nell’articolo viene sviluppata un’analisi comparative per aree e per generazioni. L’evidenza mostra che le donne che vivono nelle aree urbane del centro-nord hanno avviato una profonda trasformazione delle loro carriere professionali e del loro ruolo sociale, avvicinandosi sensibilmente agli standard degli altri paesi europei. Al contrario le donne delle aree meridionali fanno ancora riferimento a strategie di vita ispirate a modelli tradizionali.