ABSTRACT
The relationship between education and work in labour market research in Italy has been studied more from the point of view of the market’s quantitative imbalance than in terms of the qualitative aspects of the processes involved in the social construction of competence and skill. In this chapter some of the principal studies devoted to the Italian labour market will be described. This is a research field in which there is a fruitful exchange between sociologists and economists specialising in work and employment. This research has helped to establish a body of knowledge about education/employment processes and about the social construction (or destruction) of skill in the labour market(s) – a term understood in this chapter in its broader sense as the world of work and its interrelations.
