La cittadinanza lavorata. Trasformazioni del welfare tra Italia e Polonia

This study investigates the interrelationship between labour, citizenship and welfare systems by analysing labour practices and the processes of social construction of the sphere of citizenship that occur within the welfare services. The thesis aims to understand how the transformations in the working conditions within the welfare services affect the forms of citizenship by examining the interactions between the staff and the beneficiaries as a terrain in which citizenship is socially constructed through labour processes. The analytical purposes of the thesis are twofold. First, it aims to investigate how the activity in support of social citizenship rights carried out by welfare institutions shapes the organization of labour processes in this sector, affecting the working conditions of the workforce, the daily practices and activities, as well as the forms of agency involving the social workers. Second, it aims to analyse how the labour process within the welfare services interacts with the dynamics of social construction of citizenship in the everyday sphere, shaping the ways in which the beneficiaries access the sphere of social citizenship rights. The thesis moves from the idea that, in the welfare services, the sphere of citizenship is the product of labour processes and is shaped by organizational constraints and dynamics, subjective practices and behaviours, and the forms of agency and resistance emerging within these workplaces. To develop this analytical perspective, the present study draws on citizenship studies, labour process theory and social reproduction theory by bringing these three strands of literature into dialogue. Underlying the present study is an empirical research carried out through qualitative technique – especially interviews conducted with social workers, representatives of labour organizations active in this field, and representatives of local institutions – in Italy (especially in the city of Bologna) and Poland (especially in the cities of Wrocław and Warsaw) between September 2022 and September 2023. The fieldwork was carried out in two different national contexts in order to empirically analyse the transformations of welfare systems, working conditions and labour processes, and social citizenship models, in two countries characterized by different historical, institutional, and political paths. The thesis consists of five chapters. The first chapter delves into the theoretical perspective behind the study, discussing the three strands of literature considered and conceptualizing citizenship as the product of a labour process. In addition, the first chapter explores from a historical perspective the changes involving welfare systems in Western European and Eastern European countries by showing their impact on the sphere of labour and citizenship. The second chapter describes the field in which the empirical research was carried out, analysing the transformations of welfare systems that have affected the Italian and Polish contexts and delving into the methodological perspectives employed in the fieldwork. The third chapter opens the discussion of the results of the empirical research by showing how the citizenship-producing activity carried out by social services affects working conditions and labour processes in the sector, mainly due to a repositioning of the different actors that contribute to the welfare provision. The fourth chapter continues the discussion of the empirical results by highlighting how the features of the labour process affect the forms of citizenship emerging in the social services, constituting both workers and beneficiaries as welfare subjects. The fifth chapter concludes the discussion of the empirical data by analysing how the forms of agency and the use of various power resources by the workforce shape the processes of social construction of citizenship within the services.