Call for Papers: “Counting in a Fragmented Society: Youth, Social Bonds, and Recognition Between Collective Belonging and Individual Trajectories” (‘Studi di Sociologia’, Univ. Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano)

CIREAD – IFCU is pleased to share a new Call for Papers for the thematic issue “Counting in a Fragmented Society: Youth, Social Bonds, and Recognition Between Collective Belonging and Individual Trajectories”, to be published in Studi di Sociologia, the peer-reviewed sociology journal published by Vita e Pensiero – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore (Milan), in collaboration with the International Federation of Catholic Universities (IFCU) and the European Federation of Catholic Universities (FUCE).

This issue explores how young people build, sustain and negotiate social bonds, belonging and recognition in increasingly fragmented societies. The call is based on the observation that contemporary youth live in a paradox: never so connected, yet never so exposed to processes of social fragmentation and disaffiliation. This paradox reopens a classical sociological question — how are social bonds formed and sustained when the collective structures that previously anchored individual biographies have weakened? Generation today functions less as a shared fate than as a toolkit: a set of shared cultural and technological resources used to interpret and manage social complexity, without any guarantee of a common trajectory or outcome. Under these conditions, the individual increasingly becomes the primary unit of reference of social organization, while collective life is reorganized around looser, more volatile forms of aggregation.

The present issue welcomes thus theoretical, empirical and comparative contributions, with particular attention to international and cross-country perspectives, including contributions from both Western and non-Western contexts. 

Key information:

• Language: English
• Submission deadline: 31 December 2026
• Journal: Studi di Sociologia – Vita e Pensiero (ANVUR Class A)
• Submission format: Microsoft Word (or equivalent)
• Peer review: Double-blind
• Contact/submission email: rivista.studisociologia@unicatt.it