A generational attitude: young adults facing the economic crisis in Milan

Abstract

For almost 10 years there has been talk of the economic crisis affecting the European area, with more evident effects in the Mediterranean countries. Yet the expression ‘economic crisis’ has become too wide and blurred to be useful for describing how the current socio-economic conjuncture is affecting different categories of young people in different ways. Precariousness and reduced job opportunities, with their consequences for social mobility, constitute only the more explicit and raw evidence of the lived experience of the crisis among young people. Although families remain the all-solving institution, the consequences of the crisis are diversified according to the economic, cultural and social capital of each individual, to gender and generation position, and to subjective and contextualized perceptions. This article presents research conducted to investigate how young people living in the urban area of Milan locate, react, readapt and reinvent themselves in the present economic context by analysing their aspirations, expectations and practices. We develop a comparative analysis of the main structural bias (gender, education, social class position) in order to shed light on the effects and perceptions of the crisis among young people in the city of Milan.

Keywords:

• Youth
• generation
• social location
• crisis

Notes

1. This was part of a national research project financed by the funding Progetto di Ricerca di rilevanza Nazionale (PRIN) of the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research (MIUR), involving other Italian towns but with a different research focus.

2. It is important to note that our interviewees lived in the wealthiest part of the country; young adults living in less privileged areas, especially those in the south, have very different experiences of the current economic crisis (ISTAT 2015).