• riformismo
• organizzazioni internazionali
• Italia
• istituzioni del lavoro
• Francia
• uffici del lavoro

This work deals with the birth and development of the first Europeans social institutions, the labor offices, starting from 1891 to the 1914. Placed in the broader conceptual debate on transnational history, this work particularly aims to analyze the reformers' global network, together with their inner and outer role in national administrations as "social experts".
This work argues that the “Social Reform” movement was both a national and an international one, born in a time when internationalism was flourishing. Firstly, it deals with the political context in some national countries, particularly Italy, France and the U.S. Secondly, it presents the archival sources of the large reformers' network , stretched from Europe to U.S., to Japan and to South Africa, to name but a few. Finally, it focuses on the conceptual roots of the “Social Reform” movement, together with its ambiguities and contradictions. In this framework, the roots of Europe’s social institutions are better defined as transnational ones.
This work has been supervised by Professors Alessandro Polsi, Isabelle Lespinet-Moret (Paris X Nanterre) and Stefano Gallo. I would like to thank them for their patient guide, encouragement and advice. It would have certainly been impossible to carry out this research work were it not for the classes I took at the EHESS and at Paris X Nanterre, and for the year spent in Paris. For this, I must express my gratitude to Madame Isabelle Lespinet-Moret, for guiding me throughout all my year abroad, for her continued supervision and for caring so much about my work. I would also like to thank Stefano Gallo for his advice and support, which definetly helped me to complete this work.