I nuovi termini della socializzazione (alla cittadinanza) lavorativa

The youth transition to work is built through increasingly long, flexible and indi-vidualized routes. This affects the work socialization and the youth’s work culture and ethics, making it more difficult for them to build a stable career and a strong professional identity. The processes of socialization become more recursive, dis-continuous, fragmented and no longer capable of conveying a sense of member-ship. Conversely, these processes – holding the European paradigm of activation and employability – refer more generically to an “employment citizenship” that, moreover, is difficult to acquire and maintain and is often unable to meet the needs of self-realization and social recognition of youth. New inequalities among young people and a redefinition of the meaning of work in their life course derive from these transformations. Thus we need adequate policies to support transitions to work, making them sustainable into the individual biography. Furthermore these transitions must ensure that young people have the possibility to acquire and capi-talize their competencies. It is also necessary to recognise youth’s work as agency, and try to integrate the policies’ goal of employability with that of “capability for valuable work”.