Italian Sociological Review

Social Capital as Resource of Care Practice in Italy: Caregiving and Social Support in Pandemic Time

Donatella Bramanti — 2025-12-30

Caregivers and Their Support Networks. Who Supports Whom? Different Models of Informal Networks

Donatella Bramanti — 2025-12-30

Increases in life expectancy mean that more elderly people require care. This has significant implications for carers, who are typically women belonging to the so-called ‘sandwich generation’. This research, which formed part of a national mixed-methods study conducted in Italy between 2024 and 2025, aimed to identify the role of informal social relationships in supporting carers of older people. Data were collected from twenty caregiver-supporter dyads, in which the caregivers were aged between 50 and 65. In the first of two online interviews, the caregivers were interviewed using social network analysis tools to identify their support networks (i.e. the network structural data). In the second interview, qualitative data were gathered from the caregiver and their prime supporter (for example, a spouse, relative, or friend), and evaluated using thematic and template analysis. The results emphasise the variety of caregiving network models (for example, low-density large networks; high-density large networks; and low-density small networks) and the different roles caregivers can play within their networks. Their role depends on the type of support their receive. However, even caregivers situated within large functional networks may find that their resources are insufficient. These findings suggest that open networks and ‘bridging social capital’ contribute to greater well-being in both the caregivers and their supporters. Thus, promoting and preserving bridging social capital is crucial to enhancing the well-being of all actors involved in informal caregiving.

Caregiving Relationships: A Gendered Perspective on Care Time in Italy

Lucia Boccacin — 2025-12-30

This contribution seeks to empirically explore the forms of informal caregiving in Italy, focusing on the relational dimensions and the gendered configurations that shape its sustainability and meaning. The study investigates how gender differences manifest in the distribution, experience, and narration of care, and examines the role played by family and friendship networks in supporting caregivers. Using a mixed-method design – structured in two phases, qualitative and quantitative – this article presents the findings of the qualitative research, conducted through dyadic interviews with caregivers of older adults and their reference persons. The study highlights a pronounced gender imbalance in the distribution of care work, with women bearing a heavier quantitative and emotional burden. Support networks, both formal and informal, play a decisive role in the sustainability of caregiving, yet they remain uneven in scope and quality. Male narratives tend to frame care as a functional and circumscribed intervention, whereas female narratives portray it as an all – encompassing and identity – defining experience. The integrated analysis shows that caregiving is not merely an assistive activity, but a situated relational process, in which identity, reciprocity, and recognition are deeply intertwined.

Juggling Family Care Responsibilities and Personal Aspirations: The ‘Invisible Care’ Provided by Young Adults

Maria Letizia Bosoni — 2025-12-30

This paper underscores the crucial role of personal networks and social capital in mitigating the stress young adults endure as a consequence of caregiving responsibilities. The study explores the experiences of young adult carers (YACs) aged 18–37 years who provide informal and ongoing care to family members with chronic illness, disability, or age-related conditions. Drawing on qualitative data from ten caregiver-supporter dyads in Italy, the research investigates how caregiving impacts personal development, relational dynamics and future planning during early adulthood. Using an innovative methodology combining personal network interviews and dyadic sessions, the study captures the structure and function of formal and informal support networks, as well as the subjective experiences of carers.

The findings revealed two caregiving configurations: “supportive dyads,” where the supporter primarily provides emotional and organizational help to the carer; and “collaborative dyads,” where both members are actively involved in direct caregiving. In both cases, the carer, who is central to the support network, acts as a bridge between family and external connections. Although supportive relationships, particularly with partners, play a protective role in buffering caregiver strain, the burden of care significantly constrains carers’ autonomy, career progression, and relational well-being. However, the findings also point to the limitations of these networks when broader systemic support is lacking. The paper calls for enhanced policy recognition and targeted interventions to support young adult carers, whose roles still largely go unrecognized in public discourse and institutional practice.

Not Merely a Question of Work: Social Capital for Professional Carers, Between Reciprocity, Trust and Emotional Involvement

Gaetano Gucciardo — 2025-12-30

The relationship between social capital and care work provides an invaluable area for research. Recently, researchers have focused on the relationship between social capital and the care work provided to those with long-term needs by individuals and family members. One such study focused on the social capital available to family carers (Ng et al., 2022). In this paper, we attempt to explore a different dimension. Firstly, we focus our attention on paid care work. At the centre of this is the figure of the professional caregiver. From here, we look at their relationship with the person for whom they are caring and also with a reference figure that the caregiver has identified as their support. We will closely examine these two relationships to see whether, and under what conditions, forms of social capital, in terms of trust, reciprocity and support within the caregiver network, are triggered and generated.

Care Relationships, Social Capital and Well-Being in the Caregiving of Persons With Disabilities: Evidence From a Qualitative Study in Italy

Fabio Ferrucci — 2025-12-30

This study examines the forms of caregiving directed toward persons with disabilities, focusing on the role of informal support relationships and the types of social capital mobilized by family caregivers. The objectives were to (a) understand how care relationships are configured in everyday life, their meanings, and their effects on caregivers’ lives; (b) identify the role and functions of the reference person -the person who helps the caregiver the mostithin support networks; and (c) explore how bonding and bridging social capital influence caregiving practices and caregivers’ well-being.

A mixed-methods design was adopted, consisting of 30 dyadic interviews with caregiver–reference person pairs, combined with Personal Network Analysis to map personal support networks. The interviews explored emotional and material challenges, meanings attributed to caregiving, access to social and health services, and representations of the future. Transcripts were analyzed through thematic coding, while Personal Network Analysis assessed network size, density, and alter attributes.

Findings indicate that caregiving often takes the form of “perpetual parents” – a totalizing, continuous, and pervasive relationship that reshapes caregivers’ biographies and limits opportunities for employment, social participation, and self-determination. While participants reported prolonged stress, social isolation, and professional sacrifices, they also described emotional recognition and symbolic gratification. Care networks were predominantly characterized by familial bonding social capital, with bridging capital playing a crucial yet less developed role.

The study underscores the centrality of informal networks in sustaining caregiving in Italy and highlights the need to strengthen community-based supports and public infrastructures to ensure continuity of care and enhance both caregiver well-being and autonomy for persons with disabilities.

Me Time and Foreverism: L’Hic ET Nunc of Caregiver for People with Disabilities

Marianna Coppola — 2025-12-30

The communication of a disability diagnosis does not only concern the person directly involved, but is a critical event capable of producing profound effects on the entire support network, with particular reference to the family unit. In fact, it triggers a complex and articulated process of re-elaboration and renegotiation that affects multiple dimensions of daily life and social reality. In this process, the variable of time plays a central role and takes different forms, highlighting its polysemic and symbolically dense nature.

On the one hand, time manifests itself in its tangible and factual sense: the time devoted by the caregiver to caring for the person with a disability. This time, which is often pervasive, ends up taking away time from other areas of daily life, such as work, personal interests, leisure activities and maintaining social relationships.

On the other hand, time appears as an immaterial and conceptual dimension, linked to planning for the future. It is a future fraught with unknowns, in which the personal perspective of the caregiver and that of the dyadic relationship with the person being cared for are intertwined.

This paper aims to explore the psychological, social and symbolic-imaginary aspects related to the perception and management of care time, the ways in which carers involved in assisting people with disabilities plan for the future, and the role and function of support networks in the management and use of time.

Social Support and Health in Italy: The Impact of the Disease During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Cristina Lonardi — 2025-12-30

The COVID-19 pandemic has put a strain on formal and informal support and care networks, which have had to draw on their reserves of social capital to deal with the health emergency. As part of a national research project on “Social capital as resource of care practice in Italy: Caregiving and social support in pandemic time”, this research aimed to monitor the dynamics related to the mechanisms that lead individuals to provide support, to the point of assuming, where appropriate, the role of caregiver. This article presents the results of qualitative research that focused on the personal support networks of persons who have contracted COVID-19 and persons who have faced a chronic/chronic degenerative disease during the pandemic period. The study reveals a scenario in which, despite the health emergency and general restrictions on social relations, social support relationships have not been lost, and individuals have relied on their social resources, i.e., social support in its various relational dimensions. Furthermore, it clearly emerged that residential proximity contexts have expanded individuals’ ability to take on the role of mediators in their personal support networks and, in this way, to develop them significantly. Expanding the support network, guaranteed by mediation, has led to a greater sense of well-being.

Social Support and Work in Italy: The Needs of Workers and the Role of Unions After the COVID-19 Pandemic

Sergio Cecchi — 2025-12-30

This article presents some of the results of the PRIN 2022 research project “Social capital as resource of care practice in Italy: Caregiving and social support in pandemic time”. In particular, this article presents the results of the part of the research dedicated to the issue of social support, which consists of the support actually deriving from social relationships, with reference to individuals in specific working conditions. This essay aims to report on the qualitative analysis carried out, which focused primarily on the relationship between working conditions and social support networks in Italy from two conceptual dimensions that are particularly relevant in the post-pandemic period: the first concerns the polarisation of the labour market between those at the top of the social stratification (permanent workers with high levels of education and good professional qualifications) and those at the bottom of the social stratification (temporary workers with low levels of education and low professional qualifications). The second dimension concerns the distinction between those who have been unemployed at least once in the 12 months prior to the interview (those who have benefited from the wage supplementation scheme and those who have not benefited from it). An additional source of information taken into consideration is the perspective of certain regional trade union secretaries. The study presented here was conducted according to the structural interactionist approach, which posits that the networks within which subjects find themselves are, at the same time, both a constraint and an emerging effect of their actions.

Social Support and Caregiving in Italy: The Specificities of Care Relationships

Luigi Tronca — 2025-12-30

Informal caregiving is an invisible component of familistic welfare regimes, where the burden of care is predominantly delegated to primary networks. Drawing on a structural interactionist perspective, this article presents findings from an Italian national survey of 1,504 adults, analysed through personal network methods to investigate how network morphology shapes caregiving practices. Caregivers (19.8% of the sample) assist older people, persons with chronic illnesses, or persons with disabilities. Results show that caregivers belong to larger and denser networks than non-caregivers, reflecting strong bonding capital typical of familistic contexts; however, they display lower betweenness and ego-centric density, signalling limited brokerage capacity and reduced access to bridging ties. This structural closure reinforces the “total social fact” nature of caregiving, where mixed tasks of physical and administrative care predominate. The most significant of these is the fact that for all types of frailty, over a quarter of carers say they have no one to support them in their caregiving activities. Despite a certain uniformity across caregiving profiles, differences emerge: disability care is embedded in cohesive, inward-looking networks associated with higher burden; chronic illness care mobilises more open networks and higher satisfaction; elder care remains rooted in normative familial obligations. Across conditions, over one quarter of caregivers report lacking any support, while dissatisfaction with formal services highlights a dualised care regime unable to compensate for weak bridging social capital. These findings underscore the need for policies that expand caregivers’ relational opportunities beyond primary networks. At the macro level, it does not seem necessary to distinguish policies by caregiver type. However, at the level of social intervention, it is considered appropriate to pay attention to some of the differences that emerged across the three profiles, such as the structure of their support networks, attitudes towards services, and respondents’ future projections in their role as caregivers.