The aim of this contribute is to commemorate the sociologist Anna Oppo, who dead recently. Through her research, teaching activity and personal prestige, Anna Oppo supported the entrance of the sociology in the Sardinian University and the diffusion of the discipline in the public and political debate. In this manner, Anna Oppo supported the diffusion of the sociology in Sardinian University and she became an intecllectual reference for her professional community, for students and all Sardinian society. The list of her research subject allows to us to retrace the most important social change that endured the recent history of the Sardinian society. Specific attention could be reserved for the women's condition, individualization and self-determination process and, particularly the history and change of the family in contemporary society. This subject is the fil rouge of the Anna Oppo research activity and her favorite point of view of the society.
This article examines the consequences of the insider–outsider divide on contentious labour politics. Focussing on work-related collective actions occurring in Italy between 2008 and 2018 (N = 9,935), it is investigated how trade unions and new groups supporting insiders and outsiders are involved in actions that differ in repertoire, scale, issues claimed and by duration. Results show a tripartite field of actors who are engaged in contentious labour politics: trade union federations and professional associations – mostly representing insiders – support institutional, large-scale actions and economic claims. Unorganised and self-organised workers – mostly mobilising outsiders – are active in traditional, disruptive and small-scale actions related to economic issues. Non-working categories – students, political parties, loosely-organised groups – are engaged in traditional, large-scale actions motivated by political and social rights issues. The conclusions discuss the consequences of the growing heterogeneity of workers' representative bodies on insider–outsider political inequalities, and on class representation which hinders the emergence of a cohesive labour movement.
This article explores differences in labour conflicts in Italy and France by focusing on the characteristics of the most prominent structures of worker mobilization: trade unions. Despite several similarities between the French and Italian industrial relations systems, and despite the fact that trade union density in Italy is more than three times greater than it is in France, France is one of the few European countries in which the average strike volume increased after the Great Recession. Protests in France also peaked in the pre-crisis period, while Italy did not show any waveof contention. We contend that the nature and level of labour conflicts observed in the two countries in the last two decades depend on alliances between trade unions and other social groups and organ-izations sustaining worker mobilization, specifically, social movement organizations. In particular, we argue that labour conflicts are related to the characteristics of social movement unionism. Evidence from cases studies in France and Italy suggests that the role of trade unions and their alliances has beendifferent in the two countries. Confederal trade unions in France have been able to engage in social movement unionism within broader coa-litions involving other social categories and social movement organizations. In contrast, in Italy, these dynamics have mostly involved small rank-and-file unions and self-organized workers'groups engaged in radical political unionism. This has resulted in different levels of mobilization associated with social movement unionism and radical political unionism, given the greater capacity of confederal trade unions in building nationally coordinated and sustained collective actions.1. Introductionoday, trade unions have serious difficulties in developing common and coordi-nated national and European strategies of revitalization in order to come out of the stagnation resulting in declining membership and worker mobilization. Since the nineties, governments have attempted to obtain social stability by co-opting these inter-mediate groups, which have historically challenged them through strikes, the most commonly used form of collective action in the labour field. In particular, in many coun-tries, governments have promoted processes of trade union institutionalization. In this way, many unions have become bureaucratic organizations relying on institutional power resources, thus limiting efforts devoted to the mobilization of workers. T
