Young Highly-Skilled, Underemployed Welfare Recipients in Italy during the Pandemic.

The idea of enjoying and deriving meaning from one's work is the heart of the post-Fordist work ethic. But precariousness is the norm in Mediterranean economies, and work is insufficient to gain economic independence for many young adults. Drawing from 32 qualitative interviews with young highly-skilled income support recipients in Turin, Italy (Reddito di Cittadinanza), the research investigated how work was framed by young highly-skilled adults as a means of recognition and economic security in low-work intensity contexts during the pandemic. In Italy, young adults who have entered the workforce from the 1990s onward have encountered the challenges of labour contract flexibilization and precarization (Murgia, Poggio 2012). Their work experience is characterised by a lack of protections both within the labour market itself and from the Italian welfare system, still unprepared to address the needs of atypical, seasonal, flexible, and freelance workers, despite their prevalence. The doctoral research focused on the meanings of work for 32 young adults in situations of low work intensity, who received conditional income support during the pandemic in Turin between 2020 and 2022, and on their relationship with work, at a time marked by great uncertainty about the future and the economic sustainability of the present. The different work meanings emerging from participants' narrations were analysed, as interviewees appeared to assign distinct meanings to their working activity and to their (unfulfilled) expectations on the functions of work. Considering the meaning they attributed to work and the motivations regarding the Reddito di Cittadinanza request, it was thus possible to identify three ideal types: the Fordist, Post Fordist and Post Romantic worker. These three ideal types took into account the different visions of work that seemed to influence them most.