Gianluca Busilacchi

Research interests: Social policy, poverty, social investment, labor market, healthcare policies, analytical sociology, and capability approach.

Bio: Gianluca Busilacchi has served as president of the Healthcare Policies Committee and the Policy Evaluation Committee in the Regional Parliament, Regione Marche, as well as a consultant for the Commission of Social Exclusion of the Government of Italy. Previously, Busilacchi has been a visiting scholar at the University of Barcelona and the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He also was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Social Policy at the University of Antwerp. His main fields of research are social policy in a comparative perspective, poverty, guaranteed minimum income policies, and healthcare policies.

Research summary: I am an economic sociologist with a strong interest in poverty and the welfare state, approached from a political economy perspective. I am currently working on a book that investigates how institutional configurations and political narratives interact to shape perceptions of welfare deservingness and the actual delivery of minimum income schemes. The project focuses on the interplay between macro-level drivers (such as policy reforms, public discourse, and administrative design) and micro-level dynamics (including individual behavior, access to services, and claimants’ subjective experiences). A central question concerns how stigma toward beneficiaries is produced and reinforced through conditionality, bureaucratic procedures, and the moral framing advanced by political and media actors. The empirical analysis adopts a comparative approach, with a primary focus on Italy and selected European countries, to explore how different welfare regimes institutionalize deservingness and exclusion. 

This information is accurate as of the affiliate year indicated. (last updated 12.28.2025)