Local poverty systems in Italy

Chapters 1, 3 and 4 dealt in detail with the social roots and characteristics of the Italian poverty regime. Within these general characteristics, however, poverty also manifests in specific features related to local dynamics and factors shaped by geography, sociodemographic trends and balances, local economies and their relationship with the national and international context, locally specific distribution and functioning of national welfare measures, and the latter's interplay with the respective local measures (Mingione et al, 2002; Sgritta, 2010a, b). This is true in every context, but particularly so in a country like Italy, which is historically characterised by extensive territorial differentiation in many crucial respects: economic functioning, administrative capacity and political cultures. The factors that characterise the Italian poverty regime – a comparatively strong gender division of labour, forced familialism, labour market segmentation, insider/outsider dualism, fragmented welfare policies, and the importance of charities and NGOs (see Chapters 1 and 7) – therefore have a different intensity and a diversified impact across the country.

The existence of internal geographical differentiation has been a fundamental issue in the Italian sociological debate. In addition to the studies focusing on the Italian Mezzogiorno (mentioned in Chapters 2, 3 and 4), reference must also be made to another strand of literature that offers a less dichotomous view of Italian society and the Italian economy. This literature shows how the interplay between demographic, cultural, political and economic contexts may create specific social formations that are more or less favourable not only to economic development in general, but also to variations in the patterns it may take. Adopting this perspective, the well-known study by Bagnasco (1977) on the ‘Three Italies’ described how Italy could be understood not only in terms of a North/South divide in that there was also a third Italy, identified in the North-Eastern and Central regions, which differed both from the industrialised North-West based on large enterprises and from the undeveloped South. In this ‘third Italy’, a particular historical combination of strongly embedded homogeneous political cultures (Christian Democratic in the North-East, and Socialist and Communist in the Centre, including the Emilia-Romagna region) allowed the development and continuity of local administrative capacities and investments, and of family-run small enterprises, giving rise to what were called ‘diffuse industrial districts’.