GSBS

Attracting young people from
deprived communities into higher education remains an educational policy dilemma. Whilst there has been an
overall increase of young people participating in university education over the past fifty years, the number of students
from deprived communities remains persistently low. A key problem for policymakers is that widening participation
measures have almost exclusively focused on ‘raising aspirations’. However, this ’poverty of aspiration
thesis’ is contested in the growing body of research, suggesting that the poverty of aspirations thesis is inherently
flawed, thus signifying a need to revisit the issue of underrepresentation. Drawing on the conceptual framework
of Sen, this paper argues that the ‘capability approach’ offers a better way of theorising and understanding the
persistent underrepresentation of young people from deprived communities in universities. The research explores
the process of how capabilities are shaped and influenced during secondary school education. It seeks to explain
how the capabilities of young people from deprived communities, in terms of higher education participation,
are enhanced or constrained by the social arrangements within Scotland. A comparative case study approach is
used, wherein mixed methods (i.e. in-depth interviews and questionnaires) are employed to explore how social
networks, communities, and educational institutions affect aspirations. The research will contribute to the current
literature surrounding low participation in higher education from an alternative perspective.

This project was part of a larger collaboration lead by the Higher Education Academy Scotland which explored the issues that centre around embedding equality and diversity in curriculum design and delivery. This case study reports the findings of research and activities undertaken at Edinburgh Napier University where the researchers conducted a baseline analysis to establish the extent to which equality and diversity were embedded in curriculum design and delivery before developing a series of 'reflective conversations' which would act as a catalyst for staff to raise awareness of EEDC issues within the teaching environment.

This article discusses the evolution of the public debate in Italy about unemployment over a period of almost ten years (1995–2002) that was particularly crucial for the Italian labour and political systems. From the early 1980s and throughout the 1990s, the country experienced major industrial change, which dramatically restructured its labour landscape. Moreover, this industrial earthquake occurred within internal (a deep political party system re-assessment and the fluctuating importance of unions) and external (European Union-driven state budgetary limits) political constraints that have heavily influenced the debate itself. The analysis of the public policy debates allows the authors of this article to portray the agendas, concepts and strategies introduced and discussed by experts, politicians and interest groups as pillars of a new edifice of public policies. Although other sources are more complete in presenting the policy-making process on unemployment issues, the focus in this article on the public debate in the mass media reflects a specific interest in the discursive interactions between the symbolic images promoted by different actors. To this end, the authors have combined claims analysis and semi-structured interviews. Through their combined use, the article describes the selective field of contentious politics as far as main actors are concerned: its effect on the policy issues addressed, and the repertoire used for making claims and influencing policies. The authors also single out the role of the European Union and its potential impact on Italian public debates. In particular, the authors are interested in learning how inclusive these public debates are with reference to weakly represented interests and precariously organised groups (particularly the unemployed).

This article discusses how associational membership can compensate for that lack of opportunities and motivation necessary for political participation that unemployment usually provokes. We investigate such a moderator effect of associational membership by means of a CATI survey of young people realized in two different cities: Turin in Italy and Kielce in Poland. The survey was part of a larger research on youth unemployment funded by the EU FP7 program (Younex). We propose an exploratory analysis allowing us to assess at a low level of abstraction and through a local level comparison, how far associational membership performs even across different contexts as a promoter of political engagement of a specific group of young, deprived, individuals.

Introduzione – 1. Il background teorico di riferimento – 1.1 La prospettiva Resource-based view – 1.2 Il localismo come leva competitiva – 2. Il caso del Barcellona F.C. – 2.1 La storia – 2.2 Il Barcellona F.C. oggi – 2.3 Le scelte di governance e di gestione – 2.3.a Il modello partecipativo – 2.3.b Il ruolo della Fondazione e le