The project aims to monitor the application of inclusion income (REI, reddito di inclusione), the first Italian provision contemplating the use of a universal income to support individual projects of social and work inclusion. The scheme, inspired by active policies, links up with what has been experienced in recent years at EU level and involves an institutional network including municipal social services, job centers, the National Social Security System and non-profit organizations.
The scheme include several dimensions: a monthly income supports, work training, personalized psycho-social counselling and work inclusion.
The research team made up of researchers with multidisciplinary skills related to the study of the scheme (sociology, welfare policies, education, VET, labour markets, methodology of social research), is set to carry out the first survey on the REI scheme, collecting, elaborating and analysing quantitative, qualitative, networks data in a multi-level logic approach and with mixed methods.
The project has an innovative mark both for the novelty of the scheme in Italy and for the methodological approaches based on quasi-longitudinal observation.
The objective is not only to monitor the application of the measure in place, but also to compare it with the experiences and schemes in place and implemented in other EU countries.
Since the REI provision represents a novelty in the Italian framework of welfare anti-poverty policies (the previous experimentation of the so-called minimum income at the beginning of the millennium has had a limited application and only in few municipalities) innovative features are an essential core of the research itself. Outcomes will also constitute an innovative contribution to literature and applied analyses of anti-poverty schemes: papers published and the final research Report will stand as the first evaluation of pros and cons of a new scheme for inclusion on the national scene.
The aim is to identify the differences between the first phase of experimentation of the REI scheme and the subsequent phase of implementation. In this way the logic of the longitudinal panel will be adopted.
Once the results will be processed, an Interim Report will be drawn up with Guidelines, policy suggestions and with a synthetic restitution of results to stakeholders and to central and/or crucial nodes of the networks. It is hypothesized to organize a workshop. At the end of the research articles in scientific journals of social policies and sociology will be published and a conference will be held to present and discuss the final research report together with a collective volume.
It is therefore assumed that, firstly, the implementation of the REI scheme will meet a differentiated application depending on the idiosyncrasies of public administrations charged to manage it. The decision to entrust single municipalities with the management of REI provisions, rather than relying on the institutional networks settled by art. 19 of the Italian Law 328 promulgated in 2000 (establishment of "Social zones" for the planning and the participatory management of an integrated system of social interventions and services), is likely to produce comparatively better results in the larger and more dynamic areas with greater economic and productive dynamicity, and worse in those suffering from structural lack of job opportunities. REI implementation and efficacy in the latter areas could be further frustrated by the inadequacy of the administrative organization charged to manage individual projects and whose personnel is probably expected not to be suited for, neither in terms of professional skills, nor in terms of numerical adequacy.
Research teams will adopt innovative methodologies too. Integration of quantitative and qualitative approaches, multidimensional analyses, network analyses and quasi longitudinal sampling is a key dimension of research activities. It is believed that the low "force de frappe" of small administrations might also affect the ability to involve and provide the full involvement of employers and local civil society in order to assure sustainability, continuity and efficacy to beneficiaries¿ employability and educational empowerment. Furthers risks of policy failing comes from providing just the mere financial help without enforcing individual projects of social inclusion which are usually harder to improve. The survey will allow to highlight the implementation of an income scheme such as REI in the Italian welfare system, notoriously marked by both significant territorial imbalances and political/cultural delays in adopting active policies targeted at socio-economic vulnerability. Italy has historically recoiled social inequalities throughout particularistic and familistic measures (Ascoli, 2011), based on a welfarism creating a divide between hyper-guaranteed and unsecured individuals (Ferrera, 2011). Impacts on social structures has been such that they did not produced appreciable modifications neither of social stratification, nor of commodifying social services (Esping-Andersen 1990).
Innovation relies also in the combination and correlation analyses on multiple actors: both policy developers, institutional operator, front-line staffs and beneficiaries sampled and interviewed in a longitudinal logic. The collection of longitudinal data over the full model time scope is often an appropriate way to estimate the dynamic of status variations over time. Nevertheless, in this research design it is possible and preferable to collect and combine data from independent groups of sources (interviews and then questionnaires), each covering a shorter interval than the full dynamic model. Several quasi¿longitudinal designs are discussed: overlapping designs. The use of the structural equation modelling (SEM) and multiple time state modelling will be adopted. Therefore, research design (and its estate) may be items of innovation which are additional to the the topic and the scope of policies evaluation.