This contribution will focus on development from an anthropological and moral point of view. Development concerns human flourishing, which cannot take place apart from friendship, understood as love for common goods. Relationships of accompanying incarnate a specific form of friendship with ‘significant others’ able to recognize our inner value, to activate our deep desires and to enhance a practice of freedom as the capacity to recognize and reach the good. Development requires the presence of ‘networks of giving and receiving’ in which human beings, at different stages of development, take care of each other according to their resources, talents and skills. The social sciences therefore need to be informed by a relational anthropology rooted – rather than within individualistic and atomistic anthropologies – in common identities called ‘we-identities’. The latter are not based on contingent, public or convergent goods but on common goods that make that original unity (‘we’) something undecomposable.
Gaps in access and completion rates in Indigenous tertiary education are widespread and reportedly difficult to tackle. Following a survey of national experiences, with a special focus on Mexico, the paper explores Apuesta de Futuro (AF), a scholarship programme for Indigenous students by the Universidad Popular Auto´noma del Estado de Puebla (UPAEP, Puebla, Mexico) where individual educational achievements and community perspectives are intertwined by design. This programme has achieved remarkable completion rates for Indigenous students, above the overall rate for UPAEP students. A possible explanation for AF success is the strong emphasis on accompaniment of AF students, in terms of individual academic support and in promoting development in their communities of origin. As a proxy for accompaniment, the paper longitudinally explores the relational proximity of AF and non-AF students to the university, showing a stronger increase in relational proximity for AF students as compared to non-AF students.
This study investigates the limits of job accompaniment if focuses exclusively on placement in the labour market and not on building a career that generates satisfaction and facilitates inclusion. Experienced career counselling fosters the development of quality vocational interests, focusing on how refugees’ learning experiences shape their self- efficacy perceptions and outcome expectations within the host country. Despite refugees being exposed to numerous experiences, the analysis reveals a underutilization of these opportunities to develop congruent self-efficacy perceptions and realistic outcome expectations. It turns out that many refugees struggle recognizing their competencies and understanding the Italian labour market, leading to limited professional interests. Findings suggest a crucial need for targeted accompaniment to aid refugees in recognizing their skills, navigating the labour market, and aligning their career aspirations with realistic opportunities. Enhancing career guidance can bridge the gap between refugees’ skills and labour market demands, facilitating smoother integration and fulfilling their professional potential.
In recent years, the debate on the issues of hardship and social inclusion has focused above all on policies to combat poverty through economic subsidies and income support. In this paper, we instead analyse experiences of social inclusion through a survey on the work reintegration projects promoted by the Italian Caritas, to understand the success factors and the constraints of projects not based on direct economic subsidy. Even though the evaluation of the outcomes is difficult, the results highlight the ability of these experiences to ‘regenerate’ people in economic and social difficulty. The most important aspects of accompaniment for achieving this independence are the number of volunteers involved, the density of the network of organizations that contribute to the project, the number of professional operators and the overall expenditure of the project.
The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of professional training in job placement and to verify the effect of ‘accompaniment’ and ‘orientation’ processes implemented by a training institution (Enaip) on the ex-post outcomes of the training activities. Specific attention was paid to young students who live in conditions of economic or social poverty. The research highlights that the quality of accompaniment and orientation is decisive in the case of professional training aimed at young people leaving secondary school. In particular, Enaip’s personalized approach targeted at disadvantaged categories to positive outcomes not only because it satisfies demand from companies for manual and operational skills and profiles, but also because it does not discriminate between young people from backgrounds of economic disadvantage and other types of hardship. In this way, training courses act as a ‘rebalancer’ capable of empowering young people.
This article uses the historical method to analyse three case studies of support initiatives for individuals transitioning out of marginalization that were implemented in different contexts and periods. The first analysis concerns a case of ‘proto-microcredit’ in the province of Bergamo at the end of the 19th century. The second examines a path of support through school-work integration in post-war Milan. Finally, the third discusses a development cooperation project initiated in Central America at the beginning of the 2000s. The analogies between these very different initiatives highlight common underlying elements, allowing us to uncover the constraints and opportunities that characterize them. Moreover, the comparison highlights the influence exerted by the broader context in determining the outcome of these projects of emancipation. These are issues that can also raise questions for those currently designing similar pathways to help people escape poverty.
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