Vita e Pensiero

People who are homeless represent – today as a hundred years ago – one of the most extreme forms of poverty. Too often, the lack of recognition of the social problem adds up to the personal drama of a condition of grave poverty. Following Nels Anderson’s unsurpassed text The Hobo as a conceptual map, a reflection on some selected theoretical and analytical points related to homelessness is proposed...

Following a relational perspective, this research examines models of socio-economic regeneration of small municipalities by observing their flows, connections, and reflexivity on the limits of sustainability. The ‘flow’ articulates the relationship between people and resources that generate traffic in the territories. By ‘connection’ we mean any mode that articulates the relationship between distance and proximity (physical or psychological) consolidating or weakening social ties and inspiring project communities...

The emergency caused by the Covid-19 pandemic has led the Italian government to run the risk of strengthening the still too-widespread welfare regime that delegates to families the answers to social needs, taking for granted their willingness to do so. Through data from the first wave of a longitudinal research project entitled “The family at the time of Covid-19” (N = 2985), it has been possible to highlight a certain disagreement on the capacity of the government to support families effectively during the most critical period of the pandemic in Italy (March-April 2020), despite entrusting them with several crucial tasks and functions...