Data Set Title: CATCH-EyoU: Public Authorities engaging with youth: Policy Documents and Interviews: Italy: v01”
Data Set Creators: Cicognani, Elvira (University of Bologna); Amnå, Erik (Örebro University)
Data Set Contributors: Mazzoni, Davide (University of Bologna)
The data set was generated within the research project Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions funded by European Union, Horizon 2020 Programme
http://www.catcheyou.eu
Grant Agreement No 649538
Data set (version 01)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Theme 3. How are young people spoken of, presented and described?	Page 1
Theme 4. Young people’s problems in society - society´s problems with young people	Page 6
Theme 5. What solutions appear to be wise and reasonable, and what are left out of 
the agenda?	Page 7
Theme 3. How are young people spoken of, presented and described? 	 

Who are young people?
Participants describe young people in different ways and identify different groups of young people. Young people are first of all students (attending high school, university; enrolled in training courses, experiencing some form of training on the job) [11, PO, National]; a distinction is made between those who are still in education and those who are not. These are the words of a National PO, when talking about the motivations for different youth to use the opportunities of the National Civil Service:
Young people we meet are basically of three types: one group are those who did not complete the school cycle - so low level of education, in some cases they are unemployed, they are not very busy and sometimes when they are older than 18 years old, they see the Civil Service as an opportunity to do something useful for them. At the second level, there are those who completed the high school cycle, but who don’t want to continue their education. At this point, they are a bit 'more equipped, they make odd jobs or the “dangle” and then the Civil Service can be an opportunity to have an experience that engages them for a year. Then, there is the third category, those youth who have completed university, bachelor’s degree but also master degree, who see in the Civil Service a useful training to have more opportunities for employability and as a practical experience to complement a very theoretical education provided by the university. So, in these examples I could not provide a unique criterion to define who young people are. In this short 10-year period we have these three big differences. [11, PO, National]
Young people who are not in education are classified into NEET and unemployed. 

Participants also mention young people who try to get a job after high school, and do not attend university. Even if a university degree does not grant employment, low qualification is seen as a vulnerability factor. Our participants do not discuss in depth socioeconomic differences among young people; however, it is implicit in their descriptions that school drop out and young people with low SES exist and are thought mainly as recipient of welfare services/interventions [7, PL, Regional].
Young people attending university are described as more skilled and with greater opportunities [9, PL, Local]. If they had a “stimulating” family  [7, PL, Regional], they are used to travel and think about traveling and living abroad as an opportunity [6, PL, Regional]. However, participants acknowledge that there are many students, and young people with a degree who think about moving  abroad because they do not trust their home country, they feel that their talents would be more easily acknowledged abroad [8, PL, Regional]. Many of them are described as feeling entrapped [7, PL, Regional].
This is a big gap in my opinion. There are those youth who had the fortune to be born, like our children, from open minded parents- not because we are educated, but because we had many opportunities-; others are locked up here. Those who are afraid to take a plane, go and look for a job elsewhere (abroad) are locked up here, they are afraid to go and work as waiters in London… they are scared... there is no energy! For many young people, if you are a waiter abroad, in London or in Australia you’re great; if you do the same job here, it is devalued. That’s it. My son sells shoes in Malaga, but he would never sell shoes in Bologna, even for the same franchise chain. I think that's the problem. As a politician, I think we should start creating opportunities even for those young people who are grown in families with less opportunities, for those who feel entrapped. For the others who feel ready even to go and work around Europe, the situation is not so dramatic; as politicians we should worry, because we did not manage to create favorable conditions here, but for them it is good also to leave Italy.  But our real challenge are those who feel that they have no chance at all, who feel entrapped and do not see any way out [7, PL, Regional]
We should start to adopt a European perspective. We should not complain for our Italian students who find their way abroad… I mean even if we often complain about our school or academic system, the [Italian] State invests a lot on education and educational policies; as a result we see that many people who graduate in our schools or universities are not so bad, in fact they are appreciated and get positions abroad.[9, PL, Local]
From my perspective, going abroad should be seen as an opportunity, not as a “sentence”. I see this as an opportunity. It’s also a challenge. The challenge to affirm talents and skills. Maybe the challenge would be to see competencies and skills recognized in your own country. But unfortunately nowadays this does not happen and  I see a lot of young people disillusioned, who think that only out of Italy they will have the chance to have their merit recognized. There is this common general idea that in Italy you are condemned while in a foreign country you can affirm your talent.  [8, PL, regional]
The representative of the youth think tank reports that there are some talented students, both among those who attend high school and university, but there are also young people who are not sufficiently brilliant to emerge, who do not invest sufficient time and energy  in their education (they are not prepared, they are not able to make intelligent proposals) [1, YO, National]. Others youth are prepared but lack practical skills, with negative consequences in terms of access to the labour market.
Often young people don’t say intelligent things or they are not prepared enough. So for a Government or a Parliament, which may have been working for six months to prepare a 500-pages dossier, the opinion of a young person is relative. If young people organize themselves and provide more structured proposals, then it makes sense, otherwise… Also young people must offer something scientifically valid. Even if the opportunities are limited, and sometimes formal, young people do not exploit them, and sometimes they say  ordinary, trivial things… If young people would be able to say smarter things then they could also claim to be listened.. [1, YO, National]

One typical representation of young people in Italian society is that of youth as disengaged, not involved in their community and with a generalized distrust toward institutions. Some participants refer to this picture (that can be summarized as “a lost generation”) as a shared social representation within Italian society; others consider it a reality that affects contemporary youth; others limit this picture to a recent past emphasizing the fact that nowadays things are changing, thanks to new movements (e.g. local youth political experiences), and that some young people are engaged with their local communities/administrations. 
Based on my experience with the local level,  in the past we have experienced years of youth’s furious escape from dialogue [with institutions]… young people were distant, uninterested [ ... ] But nowadays, honestly, I see that young people are clawing back their local community and this makes me happy…they care about their communities, they are engaged in community building, revitalization, starting from concrete things, they claim their community back. There is not disengagement and new alternative groups of young people are proposing to the administration new themes (new topics for their agenda). [17, PO, Regional]
The narrative of youth’s distance and lack of interest represents for most of our participants a background for their discourses. In the foreground, some of them position positive examples of a “hidden reality” (because it does not find space in narratives) of youth engagement, that they know from their own experience or that they present (directly or indirectly) as the result of youth policy or of the operational strategy of their institution (local, regional, or national). As reported by the representative of the national agency for youth:
“the experience of the agency… allows me to get to know a reality that often escapes from the major media or political language more generally, which depicts youth in a negative way, or as turned it on themselves. On the contrary, - and even considering the difficult situation we are facing – we see in young people a very positive capacity to make proposals, projects, ideas that are transformed into projects; all this occurs silently with respect to the general debate on youth, and what comes out is a positive image of youth: at least for what concerns our experience, we meet the positive part of italian youth.
Similarly, the national politician reports:
“we organized a conference on migration… I suggested them to present their experience on reception of migrants. The public was made completely by youth, unexpectedly, they were all young people, on average 27-28 yr-olds. These youth … talked about their experiences that citizens did not know, rather, the city was afraid about this issue. .. these niche experiences, involving fifty young people, had the merit to provide a great message of solidarity, of engagement, showing that it is possible to live the experience of reception of migrants in a non dramatic way as is usually narrated but as a positive element for the growth of the city.. and this was done by these youth, because we gave them a space…. There are lots of things that happen in local communities which do not find a space in narratives, in which young people can say “here I show you how we are investing our time, the concrete proposal (not theoretical) that we are advancing”. 
Positive examples of youth engagement cover a wide range of structured and unstructured experiences: startups, micro credit, informal groups involved in urban renewal, unstructured groups that have been able to set up a formal youth organization, youth organizations that have been listened by the institutions,  youth organizations that have involved thousands of volunteers, youth organizations offering/managing recreational opportunities, offering non formal education. In these cases the emphasis is placed on the experiences of participation and engagement invoving young people.
There is a beautiful  green area, located in San Teodoro, which was in bad conditions. Young people living in the neighborhood  started to work together side by side, they completely cleaned it […] it has been a landfill for twenty years and it is now a meeting point of a neighborhood where almost two thousand boys spend their  time [10, PL, local]

The representative of the youth think tank involved in elaboration of law proposals, describe in this way how they engage youth:

We deal with themes that are on the public debate: including economy, justice, energy, environment  Today, for example, we talk about primary elections and smart cities. We involve young people in discussions and workshops on every issue on the public agenda. Obviously, every young person who wants to participate can join the table that suits better his/her academic and professional background. [1 YO , national]

Young people are described also both as vulnerable subjects and resources for the community.
Vulnerable subjects include: not accompanied minors (refugees, migrants), young people with immigrant background, substance users, young disabled people, young people with health problems (most of them can be associated with adolescence and at risk behaviours). Only one of our interviewees (2, YO, N) mentions young women as a vulnerable group (in relation with the delayed entry in the labour market). 
We reached several agreements and memoranda with many different actors, including public institutions and civil society organisations, in order to support coordination [of policies concerning young people]. Some examples: we worked with the National Institute of Health to map and take actions concerning some specific problems (i.e. anorexia, bulimia, drug abuse, social deviance etc.) that are typical of the phase of life of adolescence [13, PO, national]
Surely immigrants [represent a vulnerable group], especially Non-UE unaccompanied minors. Their situation is terrible. I think that nobody has really considered their condition, this means losing a whole generation. The situation in this city is problematic, as to my knowledge, there are only one or two associations that are working with these young people; I don’t know if they have ever collaborated with institutions and how they are interacting. [4, YO, local]
There is a risk that the transition to adulthood shifts more and more forward, leading to a  variety of consequences for the lives and  personal biographies of young people, especially women. There are also consequences on other aspects of their lives, such as finding a job, starting a family, having children and whatelse.
Young people are also described as a resource in terms of energy, ideas, competences, perspective. They have computer skills and they can manage social networks, they know many languages and have the resources to deal with societal diversity. They are getting used to instability and flexibility and as such, they are ready to deal with contemporary and future challenges.
Question: What do young people bring to participation? 
Surely energy. And I mean mental energy too; …not being too much contaminated… having  limited previous experiences with or within  organizations,, with other groups... if you are not influenced by your previous experience, you bring the enthusiasm of the first time, of the novelty, maybe the energy of having an important role/position for the first time [4, YO, regional]

A group of young people that institutions find difficult to involve is foreign youth.
“foreign youth are a different thing. Not being Italian is an obstacle. And we find difficult to enter into a relationship with youth, particularly those of other cultures. This issue is important as in this region we will have soon about 25-30% of youth from a migrant background”
When describing young people participants refer, often simultaneously,to several narratives and discourses that describe youth in negative or positive terms (e.g. young people as a “resource” or as “vulnerable”; young people as “engaged” vs “disengaged”, etc.). Overall, discourses show a shared awareness that young people are a heterogeneous and multifaceted group, that is getting more dynamic, due to the challenges they are currently facing.
Only two participants  [9, PL, local; 2, YO, National ] define young people as citizens.
Just to give some examples: labor policies, social security policies, sport policies, culture, school, and I would say also foreign policies, mobility, relationship with Europe and more generally with the Mediterranean countries, international cooperation. These fields cannot ignore young people’s  perspectives, …because youth perspective matters like any other point of view… moreover, young people are not "future citizens" or "potential citizens of tomorrow", but they are already citizens, "citizens of the present". [2, YO, national]

Theme 4. Young people’s problems in society - society´s problems with young people

Youth’s problems in society

We live in a country where one third of young people under the age of thirty are not in education and are not employed, this means that there is a huge failure of both the State and the Market in giving dignity and create value through people. This condition of exclusion was unacceptable until a few years ago and now we need to cope with it. [3, YO, national]
I believe that the main issues, for youth are: low salaries, temporary jobs, search for a job. Until the current economic situation will not change, it will be difficult for authorities to fill this gap. [15, PO, regional]
The previous quotes summarise participants’ perceptions of the main problems of youth in current Italian society struggling with the impact of the economic crisis. Specifically, young people have greater difficulties in accessing the labour market; they have a high level of education that does not grant them social mobility and/or access to professional opportunities, also because  they do not receive training in more practical skills currently requested by the job market. Participants appear fully aware – though only a few of them openly admit it - that current reforms of the job market may only help to scrape the surface of the problem and the lack of comments in our interviews referring to participants’ visions on the future speak to the implicit feeling of powerlessness in facing what is perceived as an unknown destiny of this generation. A likely result of this condition of youth, envisaged by some participants, is that Italian young people will not be able to benefit from welfare provisions when they will become adults and elderly, and that the country will be inevitably forced to cope with a dramatic change of its welfare system.
Today we are facing reforms which will  surely respond to temporary difficulties experienced by youth, but I noticed very limited attention, or no attention at all, towards economic, financial and employment consequences of the recent crisis. These consequences impact not only on the present (e.g. youth unemployment). The question is: what will it happen to these youth generations who are currently experiencing the economic crisis, in thirty years? When today’s young people will not receive an income from pensions and they will become an unbearable social cost  for our country? Nobody can answer these questions. [2, YO, National].
The current young generation is the one that will pay the greatest toll: they will contribute the most and will receive the less, in comparison with older generations, in terms of opportunities and welfare benefits. I believe that we will face major problems and that we won’t be able to afford, in the future, the current welfare state. [6, PL, Regional]
Young people exclusion from the job market contributes to a broader process of social exclusion from active life, with dramatic consequences for both youth themselves and the whole society.
….young people’s exclusion from active life. This is something that  enhances youths’ hopelessness, but it is also a social and economic “harakiri” (suicide) for adults. [14, PO, regional] 

Theme 5. What solutions appear to be wise and reasonable, and what are left out of the agenda?

As we have seen in the previous section, in participants’ views, the overarching problem of Italian youth, that is considered – unanimously - a sort of national emergency, is entering the labor market; consistently, most of their reflections about possible solutions are focused on this issue (and on the prerequisites for finding a job: e.g. training). The seriousness of the youth condition in terms of occupational perspectives is such that it overshadows all other issues in terms of priority As commented by one national PO (11, PO):
“if you think at the opportunities for young people to do very simple things, experience autonomy out of their families, have the possibility to enjoy a small salary to be able to  manage their lives: these things do not happen”
For the same reason, we find less consideration for other domains of young people life (and related policy areas), including those that may well be considered as affected by youth’s condition of precariousness and social exclusion; e.g. health issues/policies, family and children issues/policies, etc. In part, this may be a reflection of the area of expertise of the individuals we have interviewed. 
As regards the problems with finding a job, participants mention both internal and external solutions.
The internal solutions refer to the new attitude that young people should be able to develop in order to learn new skills and develop their competencies. Many young people should accept that the perspective of a “stable” job – as was typically the case in the past - is no more a reality. Within this discourse (contrary to the discourse on “brain drain”, cf. theme 1), the implicit idea is that merit matters, independently from the difficulties that characterize the context.
If you have limited resources you should invest on individuals who have skills, willingness and energy […]. You are asking me what are the opportunities for a young person? Opportunities certainly depend on his/her abilities to invest on himself/herself. [1, YO, national]
As external solutions, participants mention new law initiatives that promise to have an impact on the job market. An example is the latest job reform (Jobs Act).
With the “Job’s Act” and the introduction of the open-end contract with increasing level of protection, there are new opportunities to increase the number of contracts also for youth and we found that this is effective. [1, YO, national]
Similarly, all the measures that attempt to create start-ups, co-working initiatives, and activities aimed at integration between training and work are considered as potential solutions. The most typical example is the experience of the program Youth Guarantee.
We support them offering training opportunities, during the transition from education to work, and for their career counseling needs, thanks to the EU project Youth Guarantee. [15, PO, regional]
Concerning Youth Guarantee, one participant from Piedmont region [6, PL, regional] reports that the funding available are insufficient to satisfy the requests that they receive from young people; one local public official from Emilia Romagna region expressed some concerns about its actual implementation; in particular, there is a tendency to interpret this opportunity as a form of job,  and private companies, which are supposed to train young people to develop their capacities and skills, in the end simply exploit youth. 
Youth Guarantee funding are often interpreted by young people as labor contracts, but they are not labor contracts, young people often think that they are going to work and they take € 450 [...] there is the perception that, in many circumstances, even enterprises exploit these youth and do not help them to develop their competences and skills. [15, PO, regional]
The program Youth Guarantee turned out to be very successful in our region, and in October the resources were exhausted. Many proposals were not accepted because the funding was over, and now we are waiting for more funding. This is a small thing if compared with the high demand [6, PL, regional]

On the background of structural conditions of lack of jobs and economic recession  legislative measures are important, even though they may be insufficient. Our participants do not seem to be able to offer directions except for stressing that young people should be prepared to invent new creative solutions for themselves, which, if viable, might find some support (even economic, at least in the early stages) from the institutions. 
According to a national politician, a domain where political investment can potentially generate positive outcomes, both in terms of creating new jobs for young people and develop community social capital is “common goods”:
In my opinion, we have a strategic area, something I call "common goods", which includes cultural goods, environment, cultural and artistic heritage, social tourism, […], reception of migrants; differently from other European countries, in Italy all these areas are totally "underdeveloped" [quotation marks emphasized by the interviewee], we still have not invested resources and we do not have a political project on how to address them. The data provided by Unioncamere a few months ago, showed that we may be able to create 300-400 thousands job positions in the domain of social enterprise, we may open a new era of skills, access to labor market, enhancing youth resources and raising the profile of this country”. [5, PL, national]
My dream is the following: the State can imagine some services, some activities - starting from very mundane ones: cleaning up a park, management of a library - and  can develop projects or services to be implemented by  associations or other organisations with expertise and skills in the specific field, as well as organization capacity. So, for each organization there are 5, 6, 7, young people working in that area and getting a small contribution. ... The role of this organisation is to provide the community a service –e.g. clean the park- and to train young people through experiential learning by working together,  looking after and taking care of a public good [...] a small social enterprise or a social cooperative or an association that manages this activity, this common good, will be generated from this process in which youth play a central role. For a few years, the organization has assurance that the service will be assigned by the State. After young people have grown, the cooperative will go on the market, and if it has strength, determination and energy, it will continue and will implement its activity”. [11, PO, national]
The greatest challenge of such initiatives would be their sustainability:
The real challenge nowadays, -  a time in which political parties do not attract youth anymore, unions lost their credibility, - is to create something lasting,… it probably will not last 20, 30 years; however, a few years to “provide structure” is a key element or it should be. [6, PL, regional]

This participant suggests that the challenge of sustainability is related to political priorities, and this relates to the additional challenge of available funding to support youth’s initiatives. However, some participants explain that small sums of money, if they are invested appropriately, can be more fruitful than large amounts of money, distributed without a perspective for the future. The general idea behind this “solution”, is that authorities should provide “instruments” in order to help youth to find reasonable solutions by themselves. In this sense, more than “targets” of interventions, youth should be considered innovators and protagonists of experiences, directed by themselves.
Our experience demonstrates that even small amounts of money for the “new arrivals” [the term that the interviewee prefers to define youth], may be more productive that larger amounts that sometimes are unable to initiate the process and generate multiplier effects. [14, PO, regional]
Other solutions to the problem of the lack of job opportunities for youth, as we already reported, is to open up and support entrepreneurial initiatives at European level. As reported by a national politician taking about the civil service:

“if the EU politics will strenghten and will be able to provide an orientation, all this might become a European project and not only a project fragmented into different parts…The things that I am telling you now, if they were European politics, we would be able to open up a new era and youth mobility for our youth people and for young people coming from other countries… this is the future, …could you imagine if we were able to build a Europen civil service, structured at EU level… even our country could open and have 100 thousand Europeans of different countries living in our territories. On the contrary, we are afraid of 20 thousand immigrants and experience this as an invasion.. this would be one of the pillars on which to build the Europe we want”  
The same national politician lists some conditions for good youth policies:
Firstly, pro-active policies: we cannot imagine any more proposals which treat young people simply as users of services or spectators of proposals.
Second, active policies (not passive), requiring young people engagement and mobilisation of competences as well as willingness/capacity to exploit the potential of modern technologies.
Third, projects should be linked to territories; they should start from situations arising in such territories and should aim to stimulate actions to address them. Only when young people will be asked to build alliances and exploit their competences, something important may happen in these territories; if not, our policies will turn out to be a waste of money and public resources.
Fourth: we need an international dimension, at least European, and the constant connection between the local and the global.
Fifth: sustainability: often proposed projects do not have economic sustainability, they may be very good projects but if you don’t have a business plan, they will  not have possibilities to be actually implemented.

Considering how to promote youth active engagement, many participants agree that youths’ contribution can improve the benefits for whole the community and society.

We strongly believe that if you promote youth’s participation to active life, this has an important impact also on the system. So, we are convinced that promoting youth participation can have positive consequences also for the larger community and not only for youth well being. [14, PO, Regional]

Some participants mentioned the role of youth organizations and of their representatives, suggesting to reinforce their institutional presence; they have greater opportunities to be listened by authorities and politicians compared to non organized youth (or lay members). This view is supported especially by the spokespersons of youth organizations and by politicians. For example, according to the spokesperson of a large umbrella organisation, representation, despite some problems, is the best way to guarantee a large base of consultation and bypassing intermediate corps in any field of public life is a dangerous practice. 

However, the importance and the legitimacy of youth organizations as “representative” of young people’s ideas, issues and perspectives is questioned by some participants; for some interviewees (in particular from the region Puglia) youth organizations‘ representatives  are not a real solution.
The reason why I am critical about youth’s representation is that I believe that the youth condition cannot be represented. Moreover, I believe that in many systems a gap exists between those who represent other people and the people that are represented. I am frightened if I think to the distance that exists between youth representatives and youth that are represented, in terms of responsibility, knowledge, and representation. […] Everyone should participate in every decision. They are not carpenters. We are referring to the whole society. [14, PO, regional]
These contrasting (ideological) perspectives on the most effective forms of youth representation in the formal relationship with institutions have been debated in the domain of youth policy. Overall, the impression received from the interviews is that for most participants it is difficult to provide new “solutions” to the problem of youth representation that differ from the practices that they are already implementing. A shared rethoric is that young people should be involved, as they are the ones who can bring innovative solutions, but very few participants explicitly argue for a direct involvement of youth as members of institutional bodies (e.g. the example of Puglia region, where the success of the regional program “Bollenti Spiriti” is explained by having young people as responsible of youth policies in the Region; this good practice has in fact been suspended and not refunded).
“If we do not let young people enter in all the dimensions of active life, we will collapse, and our communities will die” [14, PO, regional]
“young people can bring a perspective that is necessary to everybody: political parties, unions, trade associations” [14, PO, regional]