Research Areas

Social control

This research area promotes theoretical studies and empirical research projects on the topics of deviances and criminal phenomena by adopting a deconstructionist approach. Particular attention is drawn to stigmatization and criminalization processes affecting individuals and social groups. The analysis focuses on normative devices and operating practices of institutional control agencies (police, justice and prison systems) with specific reference to social inclusion and exclusion dynamics. In the background of the social, political and economic changes underway, special attention is paid to the social construction of securitarian emergencies and to their urban dimension. While using mixed research methods, qualitative, ethnographic and participants approaches are preferred.

Labour processes

The aim of this research group is to analyse the different forms of work in contemporary times in a diachronic and synchronic perspective. Our research interests focus on free and un-free labour as well as wage and non-wage labour. We develop a not Eurocentric perspective in order to overcome methodological nationalism. The study of the organization of production and labour conditions in the various branches of the economy is intertwined with the attention to the different forms of working class conflicts and protests inside and outside of the workplace. Further, particular attention is paid to the relationship between labour and migration, which is one of the central features of contemporaneity. Finally, our research analyses labour in its different dimensions of class, nationality, gender and race.

Racialization processes

The research area adopts a perspective that is post- and de-colonial in order to rethink sociology and consider dispossession, slavery, colonialism and imperialism as integral aspects of modern, western capitalism. Particular attention is directed to the processes of racialization/ethnicization that hit migrants (and their children). Additionally, the focus is directed at everyday (anti)racism based on the appearance of the body. Through the collaboration of the group InteRGRace (www.intergrace.it), the analysis of these processes is distinctly intersectional and interdisciplinary. It occupies the study of the role played by images in the reproduction of racial hierarchy and its contestation.

Migrations

This research area aims to study both internal and international migration processes. Our research interests focus on the analysis of labour migrations and of the socio-economic and cultural transformations taking place in the countries of origin and destination. Moreover, we are interested in transnational relations and gendered mobility practices. Special attention is given to the tensions between structural constrains and subjectivities through the analysis of intersectionality among different social divisions such as gender, citizenship, race and class.