What happens if the rites of transition, the moments through which we move from one stage of our life to the next, never take place? Youth in the developed world experience many of the markers of adult life later, if at all. Fewer people marry or have children. When they do, this takes place later than ever before. They pursue higher levels of education than previously, and encounter difficulty in finding stable rather than flexible work. Residence patterns as well as access to housing have shifted. In Italy and beyond, I study the transformative effects of economic stagnation on kinship, and the creation of the luxuriously precarious.
From 2019 to 2022, I carried out fieldwork in Lombardy with the support of the National Science Foundation’s Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant.