Emanuele Ferragina

Emanuele Ferragina (HDR) is Full Professor of Sociology and member of the CRIS and LIEPP. Prior to joining Sciences Po in January 2015 he was a lecturer at University of Oxford, where he also obtained his doctorate. His fields of interest include international political economy, comparative social policy, labour market and family policy, the political economy of care and social reproduction, and the political economy of Italy.

Currently his research is focused on two broad topics. A first stream of research relates to the development of the ‘rising invisible majority’ concept and the liberalization of European labour markets. This work explores the connection between international political economy and the changing composition of European (and Italian) society, and illustrates how labour market and welfare state dynamics are key institutional channels that mediate this association in different countries. A second stream of research investigates how family policy expansion is related to the political economy of welfare state retrenchment, social reproduction and female employment/wages.

His contribution to the public debate has taken various forms. He was one of the founding members of the Think Tank Fonderia Oxford. He has published several articles in national newspapers and academic blogs, and popularized his research by participating to several talk shows in Italy and France. He published also two books for the general public. The first, Chi Troppo, Chi Niente (trans. Who Gets Too Much, Who Gets Nothing) argued that a stronger redistributive process is the best way to make Italy more efficient, and was awarded the Medal of the Italian Parliament. The second volume, La Maggioranza Invisible (trans. The Invisible Majority), discussed the transformations of Italian society and the rise of a majoritarian social group unheard from within politics and underrepresented at the institutional level.

He is also Associate Member of the Department of Social Policy and Intervention at the University of Oxford.

BOOKS

• 2014, La Maggioranza Invisibile, BUR/Rizzoli.
• 2013, Chi Troppo, Chi Niente, BUR/Rizzoli.
• 2012, Social Capital in Europe: A Comparative Regional Analysis, Edward Elgar.