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In Canada, undocumented children are “institutionally invisible” – their access to education to be found in unwritten and discretionary practices. Drawing on the experience of a three-year university-community partnership among researchers, institutional and community stakeholders, the purpose of this paper is to examine how undocumented children are constructed as excluded from school.

The establishment of this collaborative research space, helped to critically understand how this exclusion was maintained, and highlighted contradictory interpretations of policies and practices.

Proposing the analytical framework of “institutional invisibility”, the authors argue that issues of access and entitlement for undocumented children have to be often understood within unwritten and ambiguous policies and practices that make the lives of young people invisible to the institutional entities with which they interact.

The notion of institutional invisibility allows the authors to integrate the missing link between questions of access and deservingness. The paper also reflects on the role of action research in both documenting dynamics and pathways of institutional invisibility, as well as in initiating social change – as both horizontal, and vertical mobilisation.

It is well understood that women’s work situations are critical to their well-being during pregnancy and in terms of potential risks to the fetus. It has also long been known that undocumented women workers face particularly difficult work conditions and being undocumented precludes access to key social benefits (i.e. public health insurance, paid maternity leave, child benefits and subsidized daycare) that support pregnant women and new mothers. Yet, this paper aims to write about the intersection of undocumented women’s pregnancy with work experiences.

Drawing on the results of a broader qualitative study that was focussed on access to healthcare for undocumented (and therefore, uninsured) women who were pregnant and gave birth in Montreal, Canada, the authors begin this paper with a review of the relevant literature for this topic related to the work conditions of undocumented women, how work exacerbates barriers to accessing healthcare and the resulting health outcomes, particularly in relation to pregnancy. The authors highlight the social determinants of health human rights framework (Solar and Irwin, 2010), before presenting methodology. In conclusion, the authors discuss how an understanding of undocumented women’s work situations sheds light on their pregnancy experiences.

The authors then present participants’ work conditions before becoming pregnant, working conditions while pregnant and employment options and pressures after giving birth.

The authors emphasize that attention to undocumented pregnant women’s work situations might help health and social service practitioners to better serve their needs at this critical point in a woman’s life and at the beginning of the life of their children, born as full citizens.

Traditional economic policy prescriptions proposed to address the Italian North-South divide mainly suggest that, in order to reduce unemployment and stimulate productivity, downwards wage flexibility should be guaranteed and the wage-setting model decentralised to sub-national labour markets. Contrarily, the Keynesian view suggests that higher wages and demand stimuli can engender positive effects on productivity and employment.

Applying panel structural VAR modelling to Italian regional data (1995–2019), we evaluate how wages and government expenditure impact productivity and employment dynamics.

We find that a rise in both government spending and real wages has long-lasting, positive effects on productivity and employment, even when considering centre-northern and southern regions separately.

To the best of our knowledge, this research provides new insights, particularly in the Italian context, by explicitly examining the effects of wage and fiscal policies on two significant macroeconomic variables—employment and productivity—using a novel and integrated approach. Additionally, our findings suggest that conventional policy recommendations warrant reconsideration.

The paper aims to analyse the case of “Sa Panada srl”, a tiny Sardinian family firm, to provide intriguing insights for the study of entrepreneurial orientation in a context that is anchored in an apparent and hostile past.

An exploratory approach is used to analyse a single-case study through a narrative approach. Data were analysed through the hermeneutic trio consisting of three phases: (1) explication – contextualisation, reconstruction and synthesis of the history; (2) explanation – identification, description and understanding of the meaning of the narrative; and (3) exploration – discussion and identification of theoretical and practical implications.

The study introduces novel best practices that help enhance entrepreneurial orientation in a difficult setting based on change reluctance and past anchored culture.

Theoretically, the study contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial orientation, internationalisation and innovativeness of family firms embedded in a hostile context. The main drawback of the study is its explorative analysis of a single case.

For practitioners, the research proposes the case study as a best practice able to inspire successful resilient behaviour and decisions for other firms that experience daily challenges.

The study elucidates the relevance of individual factors of family owners as endogenous elements that can balance contextual obstacles with ambitions of growth and development.

The digital revolution is causing profound transformations, characterised by the way companies and customers approach the market, helping to significantly transform the tourism sector. The aim of this study is to investigate how small hospitality businesses use internet in terms of marketing.

After analyzing the literature, which concerns the relationship that has gradually developed over the years between small businesses in the tourism sector and the use of the internet, it was decided to carry out an empirical survey conducted among the subjects managing micro-activities in the hospitality sector. The research hypothesis is that the adoption of the website is conditioned by the size of the company and the type of experience one has with small businesses.

The results show how small hospitality businesses make limited use of booking portals and social networks, and it emerges how digital marketing policies are crucial to achieve success, both in Italy and abroad.

It is believed that this work can provide useful insights that can be useful for the local government, aimed at promoting a greater ability of small businesses to participate more actively in the competition.