Moving into Adulthood in uncertain times: Youth Beliefs, future Expectations, and life choices between changing social values and local policy initiatives (MAYBE)

Even though the delay in leaving the parental home in Italy is a widely debated and investigated topic, the MAYBE project aims to propose a fresh slant by focusing on the interplay between intergenerational and intercultural value transmission, the availability of local youth policies and formation of preferences about the timing and reasons for leaving the parental home. The project aims at impacting on the scientific debate highlighting the role played by values and attitudes in shaping youth transitions (and the related expectations) to adulthood in Italy. We focus on transition out of the parents’ household and on four values domains that are supposed to be associated to youth transitions: individualism and collectivism; gender and family values; religious and ethno-national values; and political values. The project deals with two additional sources of heterogeneity in order to amplify the impact on scientific debate. On the one side, it considers both autochthonous and migrant populations expecting different levels of value heterogeneity between parents and children across the four domains and, accordingly, different effects on leaving parental home patterns. On the other side, the project focuses on one region (Lombardy) exploiting the heterogeneity that it is possible to experience in such a context, from the metropolitan flavor of Milan to the small villages scattered around mountains and rural countryside. Moreover, it focuses on the national and local policies supporting young people in their transitions and their consistency with youth values and expectations. To achieve the objectives of this project we set up a consortium of two partners (University of Milan and AnciLab) combining a leading academic research organisation in the field of social and political science and a leading provider of services to municipalities directed by National Association of Italian Municipalities – Lombardy area). The research design will use quantitative and qualitative methods and several disciplines (demography, sociology and political science) will work together. The multi-method research design includes secondary analysis, in-depth qualitative case studies of local policy initiatives and a short-term panel survey. While the secondary analysis regards national and subnational demographic and cultural trends, the original data will be collected in Lombardy. Finally, a large spectrum of dissemination and communication activities will be implemented to reach the scientific community, civil society and policymakers.