NEW FORMS OF URBAN POVERTY IN ITALY - RISK PATH MODELS IN THE NORTH AND SOUTH

This article analyses new forms of urban poverty in the two Italian metropolitan cities of Milan, in the North, and Naples, in the South. The authors emphasize that in the case of Italy these forms have developed within a particularly weak and disorganized welfare system, where family and kinship support still play a very important role, and within a strongly dualistic model of economic development, where new employment opportunties are concentrated in the North while unemployment and precarious and black labour market jobs are concentrated in the South. Consequently new forms of poverty are rather rare in Milan but particularly widespread in Naples. In Milan poverty risks affect subjects characterized by a cumulation of disadvantages: in particular, school dropouts with poor professional qualifications and work experience, socially isolated or badly integrated in the outer peripheries of the metropolitan area. Conversely, in Naples a sizeable share of the urban population is at risk, in particular large households whose only support are irregular forms of inadequately paid employment. These households are still quite common because of a generally higher birth rate and are hit by increasing difficulties due to the youth unemployment crisis.