High Skilled Self-Employed Professionals in Italy: Working Conditions, Expectations, Networks.

The paper presents the main results of a long-term research focused on high skilled self-employed professionals’ working conditions, needs and expectations. The research has been realised using different methodologies: online survey based on a sample of 2150 respondents; focus groups; in-depth interviews to professionals and experts. The sample includes a great variety of occupations (with or without a professional body and a specific certification system) considering a large spectrum of sectors, such as healthcare professions, lawyers, engineers, journalists, financial advisors, consultants, sales and estates agents, researchers, actors and artists, etc.

The paper analyses the main findings focusing on: changings occurred in the professionals’ identity and their position in the labour market, the gap between the high level of qualification and their working conditions, the tensions between autonomy and subordination, the forms of precarity, gender and generational segmentation and specificities. The paper will also present their expectations and proposals, as well as the challenges for organizing network, collective action and representation of free lances, considering the role of self-organized groups, associations and trade unions. Finally, the paper will focus on the professionals’ reaction to work fragmentation and isolation due to the autonomous form of employment and to the contemporary trends in the work organization.