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This article sheds light on Italian emigration flows with a focus on their geographical origins in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, that is, during the so‐called Great Migration. Annual province‐level data on Italian emigration are analysed in order to reconstruct the regional origins of emigrants, the factors motivating their decisions, their gender, and their literacy levels. The regions generating the largest population outflows were located in the North of the country. Despite the literature's focus on the Italian south diaspora to the US, the main destinations of Italian emigration in this period were other European countries. Explanations focusing on economic factors as emigration drivers prove weak. The provinces generating the greatest outflows do not appear to share any characteristics nor obey any underlying pattern: some tentative explanations concerning provinces of origin will be offered. Data relating to the emigration of women and children point to the central role of nuclear families, displaying a higher rate of growth compared to overall emigration, with peaks during the migration booms to Latin America (1890s) and the United States (1905–1907). No obvious connection emerges between emigrant outflow size and literacy levels: people migrated from the literate North as well as from the more impoverished regions featuring much lower literacy levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Metropolitan cities were established by Italian Law no. 56/2014 (commonly known as the "Delrio Law") as a new level of government, replacing and redefining functions previously performed by provinces in selected major urban areas. One of their three key governing bodies is the metropolitan council, a representative assembly the members of which are elected via an indirect, second-level, proportional, list-based system in which the electorate comprises all sitting mayors and councillors from metropolitan city municipalities. The election mechanism applies a differential weighting scheme that reflects the population size of the municipalities in which voters serve as mayors or councillors. Using the outcomes of the metropolitan council elections held in the years 2021 and 2022 in eight metropolitan cities, this study highlights the variety of ways (many of which appear to be largely unintended) in which demographic weighting bestows significantly greater (and, arguably, unwarranted) power to larger cities' representatives, essentially disrupting the principles of territorial representation that the weighting scheme intended to embody. The study also focuses on how the legal framework for metropolitan council elections generates institutional instability via mandatory forfeitures and ensuing substitutions of seat vacancies. Finally, the author identifies potential adjustments to the electoral system - especially a proposal for the attenuation of disproportionate territorial representation via demographic weighting based on the so-called "square-root method". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Residential proximity to schools is a relatively unexplored topic, especially as concerns its link to socially disadvantaged and immigrant-origin students. Such students may be more likely to attend the nearest school to their home, since their (families') knowledge of school system is weak and school selection depends more on convenience than on evaluation of multiple schools' pros and cons. This paper examines if, and to what extent, home-school distance differentiates native and immigrant-origin students' educational experiences. Analyses – carried out in two Northern Italian cities (Milan and Bologna) and referring to students enrolled in the compulsory and comprehensive final year of lower secondary education in the 2014/15 school year – focus on minimum and actual home-school distances, the share of students engaging in 'flight' from the nearest school, and the appeal exerted by schools on culturally advantaged families. Results show that native and immigrant-origin students' school proximity is almost the same. Nonetheless, natives are more likely to attend schools that are farther from home; noteworthy differences are detectable in some disadvantaged areas. Native families, especially in Milan, are more likely to 'flee' towards non-state schools, which display a particularly strong appeal towards native families featuring high parental education status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Teacher appraisal is a major focus of educational reform, for it is believed that effective appraisal practices contribute to improving students' learning outcomes and principals' ability to manage their schools. This study arises from a secondary analysis of data collected in the 2018 edition of the Teaching and Learning International Survey (TALIS) promoted by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). More specifically, and firstly, it focuses on school administrators' views concerning the agents who provide formal appraisal to teachers in lower secondary schools, the frequency with which such appraisals occur, the modes of teacher evaluation, the users of such information, and the evaluations' operational repercussions. Secondly, it focuses on teachers' perceptions regarding the agents who provide them with feedback, the modes via which assessments are conducted, and the positive impact that such evaluations generate on teaching behaviour. Since at least some of the information collected among principals and teachers focuses on the same topics, it is also possible to explore the attunement among them, that is, whether educators working in the same school report convergent or conflicting accounts of appraisal practices. Over one-third of schools do not implement any formal assessment. Teacher appraisal and feedback practices tend to be centred on both school administrators, assisted by their management staffs, and other teachers in the same school, whereas external agents tend to play a marginal role. Findings point to a substantial discrepancy, between school leaders and teachers, in how appraisal/feedback practices are carried out, especially but not exclusively as regards the role of school management. This gap in the perception of largely factual circumstances is an issue of concern. This study also develops some critical reflections concerning the way in which TALIS explores these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial support for immigrant-origin children is crucial for their integration and success in the host society. Family solidarity norms among minority populations, however, tend to differ from those regulating intergenerational support exchange among natives. Do such differences reflect specific cultural preferences and expectations? Using original data collected via a semi-structured questionnaire featuring vignettes, we explore values and norms about parental financial support towards children among Chinese, Maghrebi and Filipino immigrants in Italy. The vignette analysed here contrasts the beneficiaries of support provided by parents to children (sons versus daughters) and the object of support (opening a new business versus pursuing higher education). Results point to a preference for supporting offspring – especially daughters – who want to invest in an educational career. This attitude is more widespread among Filipino and Chinese respondents than among Maghrebis. Daughters are favoured over sons among Filipinos, whereas the opposite holds for the other two groups. Supporting adult children's higher education is seen as an efficient investment strategy, reflecting a normative view of children's life courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An understanding of the characteristics of intergenerational relations within immigrant families in Europe and micro-level social processes shaping those relations is essential from both an academic and a policy perspective. Yet there has been little empirical research devoted to testing the theoretical frameworks underlying intergenerational relations and migration studies and comparing ethnically and culturally different immigrant groups across diverse contexts. The articles featured in this special issue provide new evidence on various aspects of intergenerational relations among European immigrant populations. In this introduction, we briefly review the main and most significant of these findings while comparing them with previous research results. We conclude by identifying a set of relevant research questions that remain unanswered and recommend a roadmap for future research on intergenerational relations among immigrant populations in Europe. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sociological research has highlighted the importance of parents' role in supporting their children's learning processes and educational success. Less attention has been devoted to examining whether and to what extent parents interact with their children's teachers, the matters addressed in such contacts, and whether their efforts vary according to children's gender. These topics, especially the latter one relating to gender differences, deserve to be analyzed and are explored via a secondary analysis of data drawn from the 2012 edition of Pisa (Program for International Student Assessment), primarily its often overlooked "parent questionnaire" (approximately 20,000 cases with regard to Italy). The authors explore the relationships that families of 15-year-old students in Italy have with teachers and show - with the aid of binomial logistic regression models - that parent-teacher interaction varies considerably according to the stimulated or spontaneous nature of such participation, student characteristics, and family and schooling contexts. Most importantly, findings suggest that parent-teacher contacts are a source of gender inequality: parents of girls are less likely, compared to parents of boys, to meet with teachers. The results are also placed into a comparative context featuring other European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The essay is a critical review of recent books addressing a variety of issues relating to opinion polling, or -- more precisely -- to their role in the problematic triangular relationship linking survey research, the media, and politics. The themes explored include the use of polls as predictions, the regulation of polls (including bans on the publication of pre-election poll findings), the impact of exposure to poll results on voting behaviour, new methodological challenges facing the survey research sector, and the relevance of opinion polling in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fear of crime has received remarkable attention in the United States, Great Britain and France. In Italy the issue of personal safety and concern for victimization has been an object of interest only since the 1990s. The aim of this article is to study how selected socio-demographic variables affect feelings of unsafety in the streets and in one's own home. The first part discusses important research results from other countries. The second part illustrates the concept of vulnerability, connecting it to the fear-of-crime debate. The last section analyzes data drawn from the Indagine sulla sicurezza dei cittadini. Bivariate and multivariate analysis (binomial logistic regression) show that gender, age and education affect both dimensions of personal unsafety, and the concept of vulnerability seems useful in explaining the distribution of fear of crime in the Italian population. Moreover, in spite of a general stability in the incidence of feelings of unsafety, data show that between 1997 and 2002 the level of fear of crime has significantly increased in the most vulnerable social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we analyze the accuracy of over 70 published and 19 unpublished pre-election polls reporting results pertaining to the April 2006 election for the Chamber of Deputies in Italy and apply a new measure of predictive accuracy, A, recently introduced in the U.S. context. The center-left coalition won the election with a narrow margin of 0.1 percent of the votes, which came as a surprise: all published pre-election polls had attributed a 3 to 4 percentage point lead for the center-left. The failure of virtually all pollsters to predict the outcome is due to various factors: sampling error issues; a 15-day pre-election embargo on publishing results; high coverage error due to households having only mobile phones or no phone at all; a possible reluctance of Italian voters to declare their intention to vote for the center-right. The new measure of poll accuracy was easy to adapt and apply to the Italian context, due to a recent election reform. Information given by pollsters remains, however, too inadequate to engage in comprehensive evaluations of their polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the predictive accuracy of published pre-election polls pertaining to the May 2001 and April 2006 elections for the Italian Chamber of Deputies. After reviewing the varied array of problems that afflict all pre-election polls' attempts at forecasting and examining the most widespread measures of predictive accuracy, the paper illustrates a new measure, A, recently introduced in the U.S. context, This new measure is applied to 69 polls published during the 2001 election campaign and 73 polls published during the 2006 campaign. In both instances, published polls overestimated voters' support for the wining coalition (the centre-right in 2001 and the centre-left in 2006). Polls' poor predictive accuracy is attributed mainly to the following factors: the embargo that prevents publishing poll findings in the two-week period prior to election day, telephone interviewing coverage error due to the high incidence of households having only mobile phones or no phone, lack of screening for probable voters. The new measure of poll accuracy was easy to adapt and apply to the Italian context, where the two major coalitions were used as if they were the main actors of a two-party system. Information given by pollsters remains, however, too inadequate to engage in comprehensive evaluations of the quality of their polls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores aspects of university students' attitudes and behaviours, especially as regards their value options and cultural consumption activities, through the analysis of data collected in a sample survey of 450 students enrolled at the University of Bologna. In terms of value orientations, the major difference between university students and other youth populations concerns the greater role played by study and culture in the lives of the former. On the basis of a principal components analysis and a subsequent duster analysis, three major groups of students are identified: idealists, universalist materialists and particularist materialists. The three groups express different degrees of appreciation for culture as a value and -- as shown by an analysis of consumption levels and styles in the following sectors: reading, listening to music, theatre-going, visiting museums and art exhibits, cinema, use of personal computers -- divergent cultural preferences. «Idealists», who tend to be enrolled in humanist faculties, are the most culture-loving, whereas particularist materialists, who tend to study technical-scientific disciplines, attach the least importance to cultural pursuits. Other important differences in cultural consumption reflect students' gender and usual place of residence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]