Image Syda Productions (via Shutterstock)
Digital technology is one of the fastest growing economic sectors worldwide. Those that garner the most attention are presumably “disrupting” business practices, particularly tech start-ups. A key assumption is that the digital era enables more egalitarian economic practices than the industrial era. However, descriptive statistics show vast inequality, with an average of women as only 10% of startup founding entrepreneurs in France and 17% in the United States.
Cet article expose les difficultés rencontrées par le chercheur en sciences sociales lorsqu’il souhaite analyser quantitativement les identités sociales mesurées par des questions ouvertes dans des grandes enquêtes statistiques. La grande diversité apparente des réponses énoncées démontre la complexité de l’auto-identification mais ne retire en rien la pertinence de quantifier une catégorie sociale latente. Nous discutons de notre approche de la construction d’une nomenclature de caste à partir de questions ouvertes dans l’Indian Human Development Survey (2011-2012), en nous centrant sur les ménages hindous de l’Uttar Pradesh. Nous commençons par exposer les enjeux d’une telle quantification, en soulignant l’histoire coloniale à laquelle elle est fortement associée. Contrairement aux idées reçues, la caste est loin d’être une catégorie institutionnalisée incontestée et sa mesure statistique est fortement critiquée. Néanmoins, plusieurs arguments plaident en faveur de sa quantification. Nous décrivons notre algorithme de classification basé sur l’analyse de réseau, la classification ascendante hiérarchique et le recodage manuel. Nous suggérons ensuite d’évaluer la pertinence de notre classification sous trois angles différents dans ce travail préliminaire. Premièrement, les indicateurs d’homogénéité font apparaitre des catégories de la nomenclature relativement homogènes. Deuxièmement, la comparaison de la nomenclature avec une variable « gold standard » permet d’évaluer son efficacité. Enfin, des tests de validité vérifient si les catégories de castes reflètent les dimensions conceptuelles du statut rituel et socioéconomique de la caste. Ce faisant, nous montrons que notre nomenclature en sept groupes de castes permet de rompre avec une vision hiérarchique unidimensionnelle à laquelle la structure sociale de caste est souvent associée.
Les données d’EU-SILC sont de plus en plus utilisées par les chercheurs en raison de leurs nombreux avantages, mais elles présentent un inconvénient majeur : les enfants des répondants ne sont observés que s’ils vivent de manière permanente dans le foyer parental. Pour obtenir des informations sur ces enfants, le chercheur doit apparier les enfants avec leurs parents en fusionnant leurs fiches individuelles respectives : les données EU-SILC contiennent les fiches individuelles de chaque membre du ménage, donnant ainsi accès à des données démographiques essentielles. Elles fournissent aussi des fiches personnelles pour les membres âgés de 15 ans et plus, dans lesquels figurent des informations comme le niveau d’instruction, le statut d’activité et le revenu. Les chercheurs peuvent ainsi observer le nombre d’enfants vivant dans un ménage à une période donnée et reconstituer le comportement en termes de fécondité. En revanche, il n’est pas possible de faire la distinction entre parents biologiques, parents adoptifs, parents d’accueil et beaux-parents (Eurostat, 2010).
Both metropolises share a similar and marked three-meal pattern. Both in Santiago and Paris, lunch is more synchronized than dinner, for reasons pertaining to professional and school rhythms. 
Demographic ageing of industrialised countries makes issues related to elderly care increasingly pressing, requiring not only formal institutionalised care but also, critically, home care.
Comment favoriser l’accès à l’emploi et la sécurisation des parcours professionnels des personnes handicapées ?
Séminaire #ecnEHESS Etudier les cultures du numérique,
jeudi 21 mars 2019, de 17h30 à 19h30,
Institut des Systèmes Complexes, salle séminaire 1.1, 113 rue Nationale, 75013, Paris.
Troisième séance d’approfondissement ouverte aux auditeurs libres avec Jen Schradie, co-fondatrice de ENDL (European Network on Digital Labour) et auteure de l'ouvrage The Revolution that Wasn’t à paraître en mai 2019 chez Harvard University Press, qu’elle présentera en avant-première.
Pour s’inscrire, merci de renseigner le formulaire.
The Revolution That Wasn’t: How Digital Activism Favors Conservatives
From the Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, many have hailed the democratizing power of digital activism. As a mode of political participation, it seems cheap, fast, and open to all. Yet, little is known about the variation of the actual cost of online participation in social movements across social classes. Jen Schradie’s research incorporates different social settings and spans from online to off-line activism practices, thus highlighting the high costs of online participation for working-class groups.
Despite the promise of equalizing online participation, digital activism tends to be less effective when horizontally organized volunteer groups aim to translate online goodwill into meaningful action. Conversely, large hierarchical political organizations with professional staff manage to amplify their digital impact. Not only does technology fail to level the playing field: it tilts it further, so that only the most sophisticated and well-funded players can compete.
Since the internet's founding in 1989, a lot has happened. From the Berlin Wall falling to Trump's wall building. In my new book, #TheRevolutionThatWasnt, I contextualize the digital pendulum swing from utopia to dystopia that mark the 30th anniversary of the Web.
The dawn of the internet age….unleashed a kind of revolutionary giddiness. Those most bullish about the potential impact of this massive global network believed it would fundamentally re-order nearly every corner of civilization, inevitably for the better.
The overarching ideology of this digital utopianism was a strange brew of hyper-capitalism mixed with 60s-era-socialist idealism.The ultimate free market of ideas & commerce would create a new balance of power that favored citizens over giant organizations, companies & govts.
In the wake of the Soviet Union collapsing and the tearing down of its bureaucratic symbols, from the Berlin Wall to statues of Stalin, the internet was the phoenix rising from the ashes. It could unite where the Cold War had divided.Technology would disrupt, flatten and revolutionize hierarchies. In the place of Orwellian propaganda and old-school communication tools would be new technologies in the hands of the people. Personalization, participation, & pluralism would bring digital democracy...
Main books:
Previously published 
See more
Thaíssa Bispo Souza est doctorante à l'IESP/UERJ (Rio de Janeiro). Elle est accueillie à l'OSC de septembre 2018 à janvier 2019. Elle travaille sur des questions d'inégalités, de ségrégation, de stratification sociale et de politiques d'inclusion dans un contexte scolaire urbain.
Since the decoding of the human genome in 2003, at least 74 companies have emerged to sell genetic ancestry tests directly to the public. Individuals receive a test kit in the mail, send back a DNA sample, and can receive a chart linking direct family lines to particular populations or geographic regions, or analyzing what proportion of their lineage is, for example, European, African, Native American, and Asian – labels that closely mirror contemporary racial categories. An estimated 12 million tests have been sold, and more people were tested in 2017 than in all previous years combined, making it increasingly important to understand the social impacts of ancestry testing. Although social scientists have long asserted that race is socially constructed, many fear that genetic ancestry testing will reinforce an essentialized view of race as purely biological, fixed, and deterministic. Alternatively, some have speculated that the tests may have the opposite effect, by revealing the lack of genetic determination to the social identifications people have long held, and by showing the relatedness of all contemporary groups. To assess these claims, I present findings from the first randomized controlled trial testing the causal effect of genetic ancestry tests on essentialist views of race. Using random-digit dialling, the study recruited a random sample of native-born White Americans, half of whom were randomly assigned to receive admixture and maternal-line ancestry tests. The findings indicate that the impact of the tests on genetic essentialism is moderated by genetic literacy, whereby those who have high knowledge of genetics develop less essentialist views after taking the test. This study concludes that the ancestry tests do have an impact on essentialist views of race yet the direction of the effect hinges on how well the results are understood.
To date, very few researches, have studied the motherhood penalty specifically related to immigration. My research main goals is to test whether there is an interactional effect between immigration status and motherhood status on the labor market integration of immigrant women across different origin countries. Using data from the Enquête revenus fiscaux et sociaux from 2009 to 2012, (INSEE, 2009-2012), the present study examines the relationship between immigrant status (immigrants vs. natives) and motherhood status (mothers vs. women without children) among different ethnic immigrant groups in France. Specifically, this study focuses on how immigrant status affects the employment and occupational status and income of immigrant mothers and immigrant women without children from four ethno-cultural group compared to French native women: Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa (former French colonies and protectorates); immigrants from Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco); and immigrants from European countries (each and every one in comparison with native French women). 
Non-Financial companies today devote more earnings to financial ends leaving fewer resources to productive investment and other stakeholders like workers. This “financialized” behavior carries many negative consequences. However, we do not know what concrete mechanisms explain it. I test why non-financial sector companies financialize with a novel firm-level database in 37 countries from 1991-2014. Additionally, I weigh in on whether financialization owes to national-level differences or firm-level dynamics.
In contrast with the overall trajectory of the welfare state in high-income countries, family policy is expanding rather than retrenching. This expansion constitutes a ‘contingent convergence’ toward higher spending for childcare services and a more egalitarian share of leave among parents. We interpret this evolution in accordance with welfare state and political economy developments as part of two opposite movements. On the one hand, family policy expansion works coherently with welfare state retrenchment to help boost maternal employment in low-service sector jobs. On the other, it reduces mothers’ care-work burden, smoothing the shift from the male breadwinner to the adult worker model. The first movement characterises family policy expansion as another tool to foster neoliberal capitalism and the advent of the Schumpeterian Workfare State, while the second supports working parents in meeting increasing childcare costs, progressively extending the so-called LEGO logic outside Scandinavia. An empirical analysis of the interplay between these two movements – based on the simultaneous expansion of childcare spending and the retrenchment of minimum income guarantees for couples with two children – reveals that the first movement prevails over the second in a large majority of high-income countries. 
À la différence d’autres séquences telles que la mise sur agenda ou la mise en œuvre, la science politique s’est relativement moins intéressée au moment dans lequel les politiques publiques produisent des conséquences chez leurs ressortissants individuels. Les processus en jeu mêlent effets directs de l’action publique et appropriations par les individus, et ils ont des dimensions aussi bien objectives que subjectives. Nous proposons d’en rendre compte à partir de l’idée de réception de l’action publique. Cet article précise les implications théoriques et méthodologiques de cette approche. Il identifie deux modalités complémentaires d’étude de ces processus de réception, qui diffèrent par leur échelle d’analyse : celle de l’instrument et celle du secteur d’action publique.
While disabled people embody a classical figure of vulnerability, this paper shifts the focus of attention to the vulnerability of their social rights. 
S’appuyant sur l’enquête ethnographique menée dans le cadre de ma thèse (observations et entretiens, n=70), cette communication porte sur les rapports de genre dans les migrations françaises à Abu Dhabi (Emirats Arabes Unis), en décrivant plus particulièrement les expériences migratoires des femmes. Elle propose de rendre compte des expériences de celles que l’on désigne souvent comme « femmes d’expat’ » au travers d’une série de trois ambivalences.
Cette recherche présente l’évolution de la ségrégation des classes moyennes selon le statut d’occupation du logement entre 1999 et 2013, à partir des données individuelles du recensement. La ségrégation est d’abord étudiée dans les 50 plus grandes aires urbaines en France. L’étude se focalise ensuite sur l’agglomération parisienne.
A new stream of sociological and demographic theory emphasizes individualization as the key process in late modernity. As maintained by Catherine Hakim, also women have increasingly become agents of their own biographies, less influenced by the social class and the family. In this study, I intend to contribute to this debate by analysing how, in Italy and Britain, women’s movements between employment and housework are linked to their husband's education and class, and how this link has changed across cohorts. Using discrete-time event-history modelling on the 
Depuis le début des années 2000, la France est engagée dans un mouvement d’ouverture des données publiques, dit aussi Open Data, visant à favoriser leur diffusion sur Internet et leur libre réutilisation. 
Most controversies in this field relate to the very nature of the impact of extracurricular activities on academic achievement, if any. The main divide is between interpretations in terms of human capital and interpretations in terms of cultural capital (Farkas 1996; Kaufman and Gabler 2004).
Until now, research on educational transitions mainly focused on the educational decision-making of students and their parents - the so-called secondary effect of social origin (Boudon 1974). However, teacher’s decision about the tracking placement of their students should not be underestimated in educational systems with binding teacher decisions.
Annette Lareau’s assertion that social class differences in family life are essentially qualitative has not been properly tested. In addition, how parents view their family’s capability to promote their child’s school success remains unknown. Drawing on Lareau’s work and the theoretical framework of Bourdieu, the presentation addresses three research questions: The first question refers to the reconstruction of different types of family life in middle childhood. The second question is concerned with how different types of family life relate to social class. The third research question asks how parents evaluate their child’s learning opportunities at home. To answer these questions, the study uses primary data from a German survey with N = 1069 parent-child dyads.
This presentation chronicles the little-known advent of race-conscious affirmative action programs in American college admissions. Drawing on intensive research in archival manuscript collections, it argues that the initial impetus for such programs began to emerge in 1963 as a result of action on the part of racially liberal college administrators who believed that their institutions had a responsibility to constructively engage the larger society they served - a larger society that was then being challenged and transformed by the civil rights movement. It was in 1963 that certain selective institutions began explore ways of going beyond non-discrimination, recruiting “disadvantaged” applicants from racially segregated high schools and conceiving of new methods for assessing academic merit. It was in 1963 that race was “braided” into the idea that a diverse student body was educationally beneficial. In short, what began to emerge in 1963 was affirmative action - many elements of which still remain with us today.
Milan is the first immigrants’ destination in Italy and the cosmopolitan city by excellence in the country. Yet for almost two decades the local government has not demonstrated to be particularly prone to the promotion of urban diversity and recognition of the value brought about by immigrants’ communities; safety policies, rather than integration or multicultural policies have been implemented. An apparent radical change started in 2011 when the left-wing coalition led by Giuliano Pisapia won the local elections. In my presentation I analyse the recent evolution of the administration political discourse on diversity and international immigrants’ presence in the city, with the aim to highlight:
Cette communication sera l'occasion de présenter le cadre général de la thèse, ainsi que les résultats d'un chapitre en cours. Considérant la famille comme espace critique d'investigation des rapports sociaux de race, ce chapitre interroge les "premiers pas" des familles issues de l'adoption internationale et des unions mixtes dans la mixité ethno-raciale, et de comprendre comment cette dernière est négociée, notamment dans le rapport au monde extérieur de la cellule familiale.
Wilfried Lignier
Changes in the labour market, in the social structure and welfare retrenchment all contributed to the rise of new social risks, exacerbating the difficulties of work-care reconciliation. At the same time, this political economy context contributed to foster an increasing dualism between labour market insiders and outsiders. The aim of my project is to better understand the evolution of both labour market insiders' and outsiders' informal caregiving patterns using the pre-crisis context as starting point (since 2006). The research is structured in some steps, using three major international surveys. It will study the effects of outsidemess on labour force participation and wage levels of informal carers in four welfare regimes (Social Democratic, Christian Democratic, Mediterranean and Liberal). 
La thèse porte sur le diagnostic médical de variations du développement sexuel (ou intersexuation) et plus précisément sur les réceptions et réappropriations parentales de ce diagnostic. Les personnes intersexuées sont des personnes qui sont nées avec des caractères sexuels (génitaux, gonadiques et/ou chromosomiques) qui ne correspondent pas aux définitions binaires types des corps dits "masculins" ou "féminins". Il existe plus d'une quarantaine de variations différentes. En raison de l'évolution des méthodes de diagnostic prénatal, le diagnostic médical de variation du développement sexuel peut se faire, dans certains cas, pendant la grossesse, mais aussi à la naissance, pendant l'enfance, au moment de la puberté ou à l'âge adulte. Mon étude se centre sur les situations dans lesquelles le diagnostic a été fait pendant la grossesse ou l'enfance. La thèse a pour but de comprendre la réception parentale de ce diagnostic, c’est-à-dire à la fois la façon dont le monde médical cadre l’expérience parentale mais aussi les processus d’appropriation et de co-construction du diagnostic et du sens qui lui est donné."
Le sujet est centré sur la recherche d’un choix alternatif à l’école publique ‘traditionnelle’, souvent initiée par les mères de famille. Je me suis concentrée sur une population de parents pratiquant l’instruction en famille et qui se distingue de ceux faisant « l’école à la maison » (terme récusé) dans la mesure où ils pratiquent avec leurs enfants des « apprentissages informels » à rebours d’un apprentissage programmatique. Parmi eux, certains se disent unschoolers, c’est-à-dire qu’ils ne font que des apprentissages informels et non des apprentissages scolaires. Les enfants ne sont donc pas rattachés à un organisme d’enseignement à distance tel que le CNED. 
L'orientation scolaire n'échappe pas à l'injonction au projet qui s'est diffusée dans différents domaines relevant des politiques publiques : le mot « projet » apparaît 26 fois dans le Plan Etudiants 2017 sans qu’il ne soit pourtant défini. Les bacheliers sont ainsi enjoints à concevoir un « projet d'orientation » dont l’appréciation de la pertinence revient in fine aux acteurs institutionnels de l’orientation.
Les batailles du dimanche : 
Pourquoi travailler sur cette question ? Voulez-vous participer au débat public, prendre parti ? 
Il y a plus de 20 ans, Stéphane Beaud écrivait 
The existence of five regimes still contributes to determine women’s employment outcomes. Hence, whether all family policy models would progressively converge towards the Earning Carer Strategy remains an open question. As for the empirical test of Becker’s original hypotheses, it appears that the shortage of childcare and the absence of maternal leave curtail maternal employment. In addition, long parental leaves seem to put a brake on women’s employment, and unconditional child benefits and joint couple’s taxation negatively influence women’s employment, but support horizontal redistribution and fertility. Finally, women’s behaviour in the labour market is conditioned by the interaction between policy and cultural variables.
La tyrannie du genre
This article analyzes changes in the division of routine domestic work after first parenthood. We wanted to know whether and how it was possible for couples to resist the trend toward traditionalization that has been shown in the literature. To do so, we analyze semistructured interviews with 27 Spanish couples who were expecting their first child in 2011 and interviewed them again in 2013. The couples were selected from a bigger sample because of their nontraditional practices preparenthood. Our results show that 17 of them were able to maintain a nontraditional division of domestic work, whereas 10 traditionalized. In our analysis, relative resources and time availability did not sufficiently explain the changes in the division of work, but specific characteristics of the division of work before childbirth—men’s active participation, the routinization of tasks, and flexible standards—emerged as key factors to resist the trend toward more traditional arrangements.
Mirna Safi analyzes the implementation of diversity policies in France within a traditionally colorblind institutional and cultural context. Using a mixed-method research design, the author focuses on a specific diversity program, gathering qualitative and quantitative data on persons involved in its implementation as well as on its recipients. The author also collects qualitative materials covering institutional actors (governmental services and state agencies) and field actors (associations and economic organizations). The analyses aim to investigate two main questions:
Soutenance de thèse, vendredi
Le Printemps de l'Economie 2017 (20-23 mars) proposait une session "Mixité sociale et mixité scolaire : un enjeu de cohésion sociale".
La moitié des électeurs français qui ont voté en 2012 n’étaient pas en âge de le faire quand François Mitterrand est arrivé au pouvoir, et un sur cinq n’étaient même pas encore nés. En 1981, 46 % des électeurs étaient nés avant la Seconde Guerre mondiale ; ils sont moins de 15 % aujourd’hui. Le renouvellement générationnel est un phénomène massif, mais il n’est pas un « remplacement poste pour poste » des citoyens. Il pèse sur les équilibres électoraux et politiques entre gauche, droite et extrême-droite, ainsi que sur les conflits de valeurs, notamment en matière de tolérance ou de racisme.
Marco Oberti & Edmond Préteceille, "
Hughes Lagrange, "
Marie Duru-Bellat, "
This research is about race and religion. While scholars typically understand them separately, I propose instead to explore occurrences in which they are conflated. Specifically, I track instances of racial reasoning that occur in relation to the religion of Islam in Western societies, by focusing on the specific experiences of Muslim converts. By crossing religious boundaries, converts shed light on the nature and content of such boundaries, and enable us to decide whether they are simply religious or also embody racial difference. The case of white converts is particularly interesting: because their conversion implies transitioning from one social status (majority) to another (minority), they offer a near-experimental case to investigate how racial categorization operates.
W.E.B. Du Bois was one of a handful of scholars of the 20th century with a sustained global impact on sociological, literary, and political knowledge. In this book, Morris draws on primary evidence to demonstrate that Du Bois was the founding father of scientific sociology in the United States; that is, American scientific sociology was founded in a segregated black university by a black man. This book disconfirms the accepted wisdom that American scientific sociology was founded solely by white sociologists in elite universities. The Scholar Denied explores the methods Du Bois pioneered, his novel theorizing, and his influence on other scholars including Franz Boas and Max Weber. 
