Paper short abstract:

This paper explores kinship networks unsettled by economic crisis in Mirafiori, a working-class area in Turin (Italy) affected by post-Fordist transformations. Our hypothesis is that the strengthening and weakening of kinship ties are dialectically divergent tendencies of a new “neoliberal kinship”.

Paper long abstract:

One major issue in the anthropological and sociological discourse today concerns the effects the long transition to Post-Fordism exerts on the social life of working and middle classes. The main effect is a growth of real and perceived insecurity with many consequences on social and kinship networks. In Italy this has been made painfully evident by the current economic crisis, all the more so since the so-called Second Demographic Transition is entailing a passage from ascribed kinship roles to more negotiated and "flexible" but still ill-defined forms of relatedness.

Our hypothesis is that a dialectic between two divergent tendencies is at work. On the one side, the feeling of insecurity strengthens family and kinship ties as sources of moral and practical help. On the other, such unsettling effects of the crisis as unemployment or the reduction of public welfare entitlements put these same ties under stress and enhance the risks of dissolution.

Within the Southern European context, characterized by a familistic welfare state and by a culture of strong family ties, Mirafiori - the working-class area in Turin grown besides the greatest Fordist factory in Europe, now largely dismantled - provides a good case-study. This area, so deeply affected by post-Fordist transformations, is the perfect field to observe the dialectic of strengthening and weakening of social and kinship ties.

In this paper we propose to present the first results of an ethnographic investigation we are conducting there, with the aim of understanding the configuration of this new "neoliberal kinship".