CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, December 13th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

Changing the way social inequality in education is treated in France and Germany:  "Schule macht stark" (2019) and "Les contrats locaux d’accompagnement" (2020)
as contrasting examples of layering

Anne-Clemence Le Noan

PhD Candidate (Hertie School Berlin & Sciences Po-CRIS)

Please register here to join us

International surveys such as PISA demonstrate that France and Germany are among the OECD countries where pupils’ performance at school is most influenced by their social background. This shared reality has emerged from very different education systems and policy environments. Whereas in Germany the early streaming of pupils at the end of primary school into different tracks according to their level is often seen as one of the main causes of social reproduction, in France a comprehensive high school delays the distribution of pupils till the second part of secondary school. Whereas Germany is a federal state in which education is constitutionally the responsibility of the regions, which means that most decisions concerning education are made at the regional level, France is a centralised country in which education policies are largely designed at the national level in Paris.

Surprisingly, despite these differences, both nations have the same problem with pupils’ performance being heavily influenced by their social background and in both countries highly similar policies were launched - in Germany and France in 2019 and 2020 respectively: "Schule macht stark" (school makes you strong) (SchuMaS) and "Les contrats locaux d'accompagnement" (local support contracts) (CLA). The content of these policies is analogous: the problem of social inequality is linked to the difficulties faced by schools “in difficult social situations”, to use the words of the German policy. In the name of equal opportunities, the proposed solution aims to provide additional support to this type of school. In both cases, this support is inspired by the principles of New Public Management: in France this materializes essentially in the form of project funding, whereas in Germany, it consists mainly of research accompaniment of teaching and administration. In terms of policy-making, SchuMaS is a federal policy implemented throughout Germany, whereas CLA is a policy initially implemented in only three of thirty regions in France. In other words, decentralised Germany has a more centralized SchuMaS, whereas centralized France has a decentralised CLA. These policies are only examples within large, interconnected attempts to tackle social inequalities. Nevertheless, they seem to indicate shifts and convergences that I critically disentangle and challenge by comparing their underlying ideas, the instruments mobilised, and the policy format chosen.

The two policies are strikingly similar in form: both are experimental policies, designed initially on a small scale for around two hundred schools, with a budget limited to a few million euros per year, but with the idea of extending them later if the results are convincing. In both cases, these policies were introduced alongside others that preceded them and, in this sense, correspond to incremental policies. The recourse by French and German politicians to policies launched in a restricted form with a view to extending them later appears to indicate that these actors were confronted with significant resistance, potentially caused by other actors opposed to change or constrained by strong institutional factors. This limited their immediate actions and capacity to address the political problem they sought to tackle. However, the deployment of modest policies may alternatively indicate that politicians intentionally introduced measures constrained in scope and financial resources to avoid significantly disrupting the established school system, which they regarded as their responsibility to safeguard.

I ask the following main questions: How and why have German and French policymakers adopted incremental policies to address the problem of social inequalities in education? What changes have SchuMaS and CLA triggered? I study changes in the treatment of social inequalities, how these changes have been brought about and highlight the similarities and differences of policymaking.

Mapping knowledge:
Topic analysis of science locates researchers in disciplinary landscape

Yann Renisio
(CNRS, CRIS-Sciences Po)

Radim Hladík
(Center for Science, Technology, and Society Studies, Prague)

Poetics, volume 108, 101950

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poetic.2024.101950

The study of the compositions of scientific topic portfolios has given us a roadmap to achieve Bourdieu’s goal of overcoming “the distinction […] between the science of scientists and the science of scientific works”.

The study presents a new approach for constructing an epistemological coordinate system that locates individual researchers within the disciplinary landscape of science.

Drawing on a comprehensive national dataset of scientific outputs, the authors build a topic model based on a semantic network of publications and terms derived from textual content comprising titles, abstracts, and keywords. Compositional data transformation applied to the topic model enables a geometric analysis of topics across disciplines.

• The design yields four important results for addressing the gap between knowledge and knowledge-producers.  Hierarchical clustering confirms an alignment between traditional disciplinary classification and our empirical, bottom-up topic model.
• Principal component analysis reveals three axes – Culture–Nature, Life–Non-life, and Materials–Methods – that primarily structure this scientific knowledge space.
• The projection of individual researchers via their topic portfolios allows to locate them relationally on these three continuous measures of epistemological distinctions. 
• The robustness of our approach is validated by examining the links between researchers’ topic orientation and supplementary variables such as publication practices, gender, institutional affiliations, and funding sources. 

This method could inform science policy and evaluation practices, as well as be extended to uncover associations between products and producers in other cultural fields.

Epistemological coordinates of researchers between Life–Non-life and Materials–Methods oppositions

Each dot corresponds to a projection of an individual topic portfolio onto principal components 2 and 3 in the knowledge space defined by variance of topics across disciplines. N = 58466 of researchers with 5 or more publications. Broad classifications for individuals are denoted by colors, and the mean at the second level of FORD classification is indicated by labels (fig.7 in the paper).

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, December 6th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

Accessory Dwelling Units and California's Housing Affordability Crisis:
Evidence of Policy Success?

Nicholas J. Marantz

Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy
University of California, Irvine

Open seminar. Please register here to join us

Over the past two decades, housing affordability has become a pressing concern across many advanced economies.

While the United States does not exhibit a severe housing affordability problem on average, this national perspective masks significant regional disparities. California, in particular, stands out as the epicenter of housing unaffordability in the U.S., largely due to a chronic under-supply of housing.

This presentation assesses the causes and consequences of the recent boom in accessory dwelling units (ADUs) in California. ADUs—secondary units typically located in the yard or garage of single-family homes—have accounted for roughly a third all housing units permitted in California since 2018.

I analyze the factors driving the surge in ADU permitting, and I use regression models to identify the characteristics of neighborhoods where ADUs are most likely to be permitted. I conclude by discussing whether this trend represents a successful policy intervention that could inform housing strategies both in other parts of the U.S. and globally.

To find out more about Nicholas Marantz

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, November 29th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

The Rise and Fall of Family Allowances in Spain:
Religious Cleavages, Political Regimes and Economic Constraints,
1926-1958

Guillem Verd Llabrés

PhD in Economic History, University of Barcelona 
Lecturer, International University of Catalonia

Open seminar. Please register here to join us

After the end of World War II, family allowances became central to Western European Welfare states as they influenced gender relations, demographic growth, child welfare and wage regulation. Yet, their implementation was shaped by several determinants —fertility rates, religion, Conservative dictatorships, or party competition— whose relative importance is still open to study.
Spain provides a significant case study to understand such determinants. It was a firstcomer in developing family allowances, giving them a crucial role in the Francoist social policies, but their development was marked by significant religious cleavages, left-right political competition and regime changes during the interwar period.

The paper shows that, despite gaining momentum among catholic campaigners and Parties, the apathy —if not opposition— from the left, employers and landowners prevented the scheme from being developed before the Spanish Civil War.
After the conflict, despite becoming central to Francoist social programs targeting the family and the labour market, family allowances fell well behind campaigners’ expectations, and proved unable to reach a significant proportion of Spanish families. The Spanish low fiscal capacity and the inability to collect contributions —particularly in the countryside— were central to understanding such a difficult development.

• https://guillemverdllabres.wordpress.com/

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, November 22th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

In the name of mixedness.
First name choices in France for children of mixed-race marriages
and internationally adopted children

Solène Brun

Associate Scientist CNRS, Institut de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux sociaux (IRIS)

This article, based on a survey of international adoptive parents and mixed-race couples conducted between 2015 and 2017, looks at the considerations involved in naming children in these two types of mixed families in France. Parents in these families have to negotiate multiple affiliations and origins, meaning that choice of child’s first name has particular symbolic implications. These in turn are reflected in parents’ approaches and strategies for integrating the child into the different family lines; they also involve defining identities at both a national and racialized level. In this respect, the article explores an understudied dimension of the sociology of first names in France, with particular attention to the racialized dimension of the naming process.

Open seminar. Please register here to join us.

• Paper, published by the Revue Française de Sociologie (FR) | English version
• To fing out more about Solène Brun

La ségrégation sociale entre les collèges dans le système éducatif français.
Mesure, disparités géographiques, évolution temporelle et conséquences

Thèse menée sous la direction de Louis-André Vallet
(Directeur de recherche CNRS, Gemass, Sorbonne Université)

Soutenance à Sciences Po le mardi 3 décembre 2024, 14h30

Composition du jury : Gwenaëlle Audren (AMU-Telemme), Carlo Barone (Sciences Po-CRIS), Jérôme Deauvieau (ENS-CMH), Marc Demeuse (Université de Mons), Fabienne Rosenwald (Cour des comptes), Louis-André Vallet (Sorbonne Université-GEMASS).

Dans le contexte du système éducatif français, la ségrégation sociale entre les collèges se définit par les écarts entre ces établissements suivant les milieux sociaux des élèves qu’ils scolarisent. Cette thèse prolonge des travaux de morphologie sociale de nature statistique menés en tant qu’expert à la DEPP, service statistique de l’Éducation nationale.
Les données sont les bases nationales individuelles d’élèves du second degré et les panels d’élèves de la DEPP.

Selon des recherches récentes menées à une échelle locale, l’existence d’une forte ségrégation entre collèges est préjudiciable au climat scolaire et aux poursuites d’études dans les collèges les plus défavorisés, alors que ces effets sont toutefois modérés en matière d’acquisition de compétences, ce qu’accréditent mes investigations.

La thèse dresse un état des lieux de la ségrégation sociale entre les collèges au début des années 2020. Celui-ci s’appuie sur une étude circonstanciée des principales mesures de la ségrégation qui ont été proposées dans la littérature scientifique, étude qui incite à privilégier l’indice d’entropie.

La stabilité de la ségrégation au plan national depuis vingt ans résulte d’une baisse de la ségrégation entre collèges publics et d’une hausse des écarts entre collèges publics et privés. L’analyse menée dans les principales villes françaises confirme le poids important du secteur privé dans la ségrégation, même si le rôle de la ségrégation résidentielle est prépondérant.

La thèse se conclut par un tour d’horizon des travaux à entreprendre en vue d’approfondir cet état des lieux de la ségrégation sociale et mieux appréhender ses effets sur les parcours et résultats scolaires.

Le programme Défi Jeunesse accompagne les élèves tout au long du collège, de la 6ème à la 3ème. Durant l’année scolaire 2023-2024, 15 000 jeunes de 37 établissements en réseau d’éducation prioritaire (REP et REP+) ont bénéficié de ce programme dans les 10 territoires où il est déployé.

Porté par l'association Alliance pour l'éducation | United Way, le programme mobilise et fédère de nombreux acteurs  présents sur le territoire (établissements scolaires, associations, entreprises, acteurs publics). Ce programme complémentaire à l’école permet aux élèves scolarisés dans un collège du réseau d'éducation prioritaire d’acquérir des connaissances de soi et du monde professionnel, pour mieux prendre leur place dans la société.
Les objectifs sont tournés vers la promotion de l’égalité des chances, à travers plusieurs actions : remobiliser scolairement, aider à définir un parcours professionnel, s'orienter, découvrir le tissus économique local et échanger avec des acteurs professionels. 

Alliance pour l'éducation | United Way met en place une recherche-action grâce au financement d'un contrat doctoral CIFRE* pour évaluer l'impact du programme. A travers des dispositifs d'évaluation randomisée et des techniques qualitatives, le ou la doctorant·e pourra explorer plusieurs questions de recherche, établir un diagnostic et formuler des recommandations concrètes pour étendre et améliorer l'efficacité du programme.   

Diplômés en master de sociologie, économie, psychologie, science politique ou sciences de l'éducation, pourvus de connaissances en méthodes quali et quanti, et en évaluation de politique publique, vous pouvez envoyer votre candidature avant le 30 novembre 2024. Les modalités de candidature sont précisées dans cette fiche (pdf, 109 ko).
La thèse sera menée au CRIS (Sciences Po), sous la direction du professeur Carlo Barone.

* CIFRE : Conventions Industrielles de Formation pour la Recherche

The CRIS team is pleased to welcome 7 new PhD students for the next few years, carrying 7 varied research sujects questioning inequalities.

• Florian Andersen - Understanding Labor Flow Networks and Wage Inequality: an Analysis of Career Trajectories and Labor Market Dynamics (dir. Olivier Godechot).
  M.A: University of Mannheim

• Camille Voisin - La réforme des groupes de besoins au collège : quels impacts sur les performances, les inégalités scolaires et les compétences socio-émotionnelles des élèves ? (dir. Carlo Barone & Nina Guyon - PSE / ENS)
  M.A: ENS - Sciences cognitives
• Jeong-A Lee - Fertility intentions and behaviours in the context of changing ideals in South Korea and East Asia (dir. Angela Greulich & Laurent Toulemon - INED).
  M.A: Université de Strasbourg / École des Hautes Études en Démographie
• Ida Gaede - Migrant Mothers: the Role of Citizenship and Migration in Post-Birth Employment Trajectories in Germany and France (dir. Marta Dominguez-Folgueras).
  M.A: ENS - Parcours "Quantifier en Sciences Sociales"

• Sophia Noel - Widowhood and Vulnerability in the Face of Climate Change (dir. Zachary Van Winkle).
  M.A: Sciences Po, sociology

• Clara Le Gallic-Ach - Déclarer des violences de genre en France depuis #Metoo (dir. Marta Dominguez-Folgueras).
  M.A: "Sociologie quantitative et démographie", Université Paris Saclay et "Data science et sciences sociales", ENSAE

• Ines Malroux - Primes socialisations de genre et de classe sociale et développement dans la petite enfance (dir. Lidia Panico).
  M.A: Université Paris Nanterre et École des Hautes Études en Démographie

On April 5, 2024, James K. Boyce, co-winner of the 2024 Global Inequality Research Award (GiRA), gave a lecture at Sciences Po Paris. In his talk, he shared insights from his extensive research on the links between inequality and the environment, reflecting on the travels, encounters, and milestones that have shaped his intellectual journey.

The full lecture is now available as the first in the GiRA series here (pdf, 3,7 Mo).

Boyce expressed his gratitude for receiving the inaugural GiRA, stating:
“I am deeply honored to receive this inaugural Global Inequality Research Award […] with my friend Bina Agarwal, who has done so much to advance our understanding of the interactions between gender inequality and the environment.”

He closed the lecture by highlighting two of the most pressing challenges of our time:
“The first is to halt and, when possible, reverse the degradation of the environment, including destabilization of the planet’s climate. The second is to reduce the inequalities of wealth and power that threaten to tear societies apart. I believe that it is both possible and necessary to tackle these challenges together. These two historic tasks can and must go hand-in-hand.”

About the GiRA Lectures
The GiRA aims to recognize researchers from all disciplines who have made a significant contribution to the understanding of global inequalities. It is a joint initiative between the World Inequality Lab (WIL) and Sciences Po’s Center for Research on social InequalitieS (CRIS).
This inaugural lecture was organized as part of the Social-ecological transitions (SET) initiative supported the OFCE, CEE  and CSO, which aims to encourage collaboration between researchers working at the frontier of social and environmental issues, across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.
The GiRA Lecture Series aims to capture and disseminate the knowledge and insights of award recipients, providing a platform to engage with groundbreaking research on global inequalities.

Next GiRA lecture
Bina Agarwal, co-recipient of the 2024 GiRA, will receive her award and deliver a lecture on Wednesday, March 19, 2025, at the Paris School of Economics. Registration will open in January 2025.

Les candidats et candidates au concours de Chargé·e de recherche 2025 du CNRS peuvent bénéficier du soutien actif du CRIS (UMR 7049).

Le Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS) est rattaché au CNRS (sections 36 et 40) et à Sciences Po. Il accueille des chercheuses et chercheurs issus de plusieurs disciplines souhaitant développer une recherche de pointe sur la stratification et les inégalités sociales.

Les travaux menés au CRIS couvrent une diversité de domaines (genre, origine, milieu social, éducation, ségrégation urbaine, politiques sociales, mobilités et migrations, pratiques culturelles, usages du numériques, inégalités environnementales, inégalités de santé…) et utilisent plusieurs types de méthodologies, y compris expérimentales.

L'internationalisation, la rigueur théorique et méthodologique, le respect de l'autonomie des personnels académiques constituent les piliers de la politique scientifique du CRIS.

Les candidates et candidats intéressés par nous rejoindre sont invités à prendre rendez-vous avant le 15 novembre 2024 avec le directeur de l'unité, Carlo Barone (carlo.barone@sciencespo.fr ; en copie la Secrétaire générale Linda Amrani :  linda.amrani@sciencespo.fr) en joignant :

• un CV, 
• un descriptif de leur projet de recherche,
• une lettre d'intention explicitant le choix du CRIS.

Le Conseil du laboratoire statuera sur les demandes et pourra proposer une présentation orale en séminaire d'équipe.

• Pour en savoir plus : site CNRS Carrières (lancement du concours en janvier 2025).

The CRIS aims to strengthen its expertise on the topic of digital inequalities. We invite early career researchers (PhD students and Post-docs from a variety of disciplines, e.g. sociology, economics, psychology, political science, computer and computational science, anthropology, demography and related fields) working with a variety of theoretical perspectives and research methods to submit their papers and participate to the symposium. The event will take place on Thursday 19 December at Sciences Po, in partnership with the Open Institute for Digital Transformation (part of TIERED project). This symposium provides a platform to present groundbreaking research, engage in discussions, and collaborate with other researchers.

The rapid proliferation of digital technologies - from computers, the internet and portable devices to social media, streaming devices and virtual reality, along with artificial intelligence (AI), automation, and algorithms - has transformed modern societies.

Social inequalities both shape and are shaped by these digital tools, raising questions about the persistence, reproduction, and exacerbation of social inequalities. At the same time, an explosion of digital data and methods of analysis, from digital ethnographies to computational methods have broadened our understanding of how society operates in the digital era.

Several lines of inequality research are key factors in the relationship between digital technologies and society:

1. Digital inequalities around access is the most long-standing research on tech disparities. While scholars have largely moved on from classic “digital divide” research, much is still to be known about changes over time and place, especially with variation in constantly changing devices and connections. Equally important is understanding the persistence of digital content production and whose voices we are streaming and scrolling – and whose we are not. This research stream considers, for instance, inequalities based on country, social class, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, race, and migration background.
2. More research is needed on information inequalities in the use of digital technologies, whether with social connections or news and media resources. More research is needed on the skills and the capacity to evaluate disinformation and AI-generated content. With costs and complexity of digital platforms exploding at the same rate as new apps, who is left out of the savvy and autonomous use of these tools is important to study.
3. Algorithmic bias and discrimination research has been growing: how do these inequality mechanisms operate globally and intersectionally? What are other forms of automated inequalities that are understudied?
4. How do digital technologies affect people’s life chances, for instance, with respect to education and labor market outcomes, earnings, or capacity for civic engagement and voting? To what extent, if at all, do social groups enjoy different returns to the use these tools?
5. How do humans and machines co-evolve within different social environments and technical ecosystems? How do different algorithmic recommendation systems and AI-driven assistants shape concentration, polarization, inequality, and radicalization?
6. How can the spread of AI and computational methods support researchers in revealing, understanding, and measuring phenomena traditionally analyzed in social science? How can qualitative and mixed-methods interact with digital methods?
7. Big Tech companies are vertically integrated in society and are a growing source of political and economic power. How is this creating inequalities globally, locally, and in the tech job market itself?
8. Policy implications: is access to & use of technology more or less unequal than access to and use of traditional media such as broadcast media, newspapers and magazines, telephones? Access to and use of DT is highly unequal, but does their spread represent a net increase or decrease in equality? How might regulatory policies affect digital inequalities?

Join us in this endeavor to bridge the knowledge gap and foster outstanding social science research on inequality and the digital transformation! We look forward to your contributions and insights before the deadline: 15 November 2024.

Please download here the proposal and the submission guidelines (pdf, 148 ko). For any queries, contact allison.rovny@sciencespo.fr.

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, October 4th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas)

The Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty in High-Income Countries

Zachary Parolin

Assistant Professor of Social Policy, Bocconi University
ExpPov Director (ERC Started Grant funded project)

Childhood poverty increases the likelihood of adult poverty. However, past research offers conflicting accounts of cross-national variation in the strength of, and mechanisms underpinning, the intergenerational persistence of poverty.

This study investigates differences in intergenerational poverty in the United States (U.S.), Australia, Denmark, Germany, and United Kingdom (UK) using administrative- and survey-based panel datasets.

We decompose intergenerational poverty into family background effects, mediation effects, tax/transfer insurance effects, and a residual poverty penalty. Intergenerational poverty in the U.S. is four times stronger than in Denmark and Germany, and twice as strong as in Australia and the UK. The U.S. disadvantage is not channeled through family background, mediators, neighborhood effects, or racial/ethnic discrimination.
Instead, the U.S. has comparatively weak tax/transfer insurance effects and a more severe residual poverty penalty. Should the U.S. adopt the tax/transfer insurance effects of peer countries, its intergenerational poverty persistence could decline by more than one-third.

Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

To find out more:

• IZA Discussion Paper n° 16194
• Personal website
• Profile in Bocconi University Website

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2024-2025

Friday, September 20th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Mitigating the socioeconomic gap in early childcare enrollment:
Evidence from a mixed-methods, multi-arm experiment

Laudine Carbuccia

PhD Candidate, Sciences Po - CRIS, LIEPP

Access to early childcare for low socioeconomic status (SES) families has the potential to mitigate socioeconomic inequalities.
Yet, there is an SES-based gap in early childcare enrollment. While low-SES families would benefit the most from attending early childcare, they access early childcare the least.

This study tackles cognitive and behavioral barriers behind this access gap. Through a mixed-methods, multi-arm experiment in the Paris metropolitan area, we evaluate the effectiveness of informational interventions and personalized administrative support in enhancing early childcare application and access for low-SES families.

Results reveal that the information-only treatment has little to no impact  for most families, combining information and administrative support significantly increases application rates for low-SES families, and bridges the SES-gap in early childcare applications for those that receive support. Moreover, we assess treatment heterogeneity based on migration background, level of information and previous experience with early childcare. We observe stronger effects among low-educated mothers born abroad, among families who had never used early childcare before, and among least informed households.
These findings underscore the importance of addressing cognitive and behavioral barriers to early childcare access, particularly for vulnerable populations. However, despite large impacts on application rates, we find limited impact on enrollment rates for low-SES families. By disentangling the impacts of informational interventions and administrative support, our study provides insights for policymakers aiming to promote equitable access to high-quality early childcare, thereby promoting equal opportunities from an early age, which is essential for mitigating inequalities.

Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

To find out more: Personal webpage

Sciences Po and the CRIS are pleased to welcome Leda Perez, associate professor of the Academic Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Universidad del Pacífico (Peru).

Her visiting stay, along 1 semester (September-December 2024) is offered as part of the Gender studies visiting faculty programme 2024 (IdEx - Université Paris Cité).
This programme aims at fostering interdisciplinary opportunities, encouraging the development of new partnerships for collaborative research, as well as facilitating the mobility of English and French-speaking gender studies researchers towards France.

Thanks to Leda for agreeing to tell us more about her and her research work.

A personal & career path across continents, languages & cultures

I was born in New York City and raised in Miami by Cuban immigrants. Given that I am part of the first generation of children of Cubans who settled in the United States following the Cuban Revolution, my experience growing up was very much as part of a subculture of that community in Miami.  This was an interesting in terms of navigating the world of my English-speaking school and my Spanish-speaking home.  My friends and I developed a special language – Spanglish – to communicate among ourselves.  I still use it when I meet people  back home!
I grew up speaking Spanish – it is the first language I spoke, although English is the language of my education.I also studied French in high school and have taken conversation courses over several years in my adult life.  But I am still learning and not as proficient as I would like to be!  Perhaps at the end of this semester, I will finally feel comfortable enough to teach a class in French!

For as long as I can remember, I have always been curious about the world beyond my immediate community.  I am easily enamored by different people and cultures – thus, I love to travel and learn languages.  I think it is also these empathies that later combined with my passion for social justice.
I completed my doctoral studies in the United States at the Graduate School of International Studies of the University of Miami in Interamerican Studies and Comparative Development.
In the earlier part of this century, I moved to Peru for personal reasons and have remained there for nearly 20 years!  Once settled, the opportunity arose to return to academia.  I have been a professor with the Universidad del Pacífico in Lima since 2012 and a member of the Social and Political Science Department since 2017.

A Scientist and also a citizen with social beliefs

I worked for about 15 years as a policy activist around health care access issues, moving the needle on health care reform in the United States (the only industrialized country in the world without a universalized health care system).  I led the Miami-based portion of a W.K Kellogg Foundation-funded national project, Community Voices, intended to shore up the lived experiences of people without health insurance as well as to lift up community-based solutions.
In this trajectory, I published with my fellow policy advocates in both academic journals and in policy forums. I eventually moved the local project from its first home at a clinic and homeless shelter to a public policy think tank.  I would like to think that the seeds of President Obama´s health care reform in 2010 was informed by our national efforts (as well as so many other projects and organizations across the country, of course).  

Main research topic, problematics dealing with gender inequalities

I am an Associate Professor and teach an introductory course to political science as well as a seminar devoted to women and development.  The latter is informed by my research on women in precarious employment in Peru and in Latin America, particularly the work associated to social reproduction, mainly paid domestic work.  This research links with my historic interest – and concern about -- the drivers of inequality, be it unequal access to health care systems or people´s exclusion from basic human and/or citizen rights due to their gender.
Through this work I have been studying paid domestic workers in Peru for the past decade, trying to understand the reasons for this labor sector´s continued marginalization and bringing to light how their rights progress, while challenged at the same time by, on the one hand, a State without the capacity – or will – to enforce these entirely, and social norms, on the other, that continue to sideline these workers.  My research has also expanded to the comparative study of the experiences of domestic and care work in other countries of the region.  Most recently I have begun to study how emerging care systems are functioning as a possible foundation for improved universalized social protections in Latin America. 

I have recently finished writing a book, “A Barometer for Democracy: Social Reproduction, Domestic Work, and Women´s Inequality in Latin America,” which is finalizing its review process under the auspices of Temple University Press.  This book is the sum of my research on women´s precarious work, primarily in domestic and/or care-related duties and how this, in essence, sets the stage for how women, generally, are positioned in our Latin American societies.  That is, women are not only linked to the domestic sphere because of their paid work there, but they are positioned in all that is domestic and care-related because of their gender.  And, perhaps more importantly, they are bound to each other.  One woman´s progress is based on another women´s stagnation.  If that is the formula, how is it possible for all women to be truly equal partners in our democratic projects?  That is my question and concern.

Scientific background, skills and methods

My training is interdisciplinary.  The field that I am closest to is political science because of the focus on development and rights in Latin America, but the subject matter that I study, and the literature with which I dialogue, is also related to sociology, feminist economics and gender studies (and increasingly, there is more political science work that examines the questions from a policy perspective).  My methods are mostly qualitative.  I work with in-depth interviews and focus groups to inform my work.  I also use short surveys.  I have published papers that are the result of partnerships with other colleagues that have also informed my work through quantitative analyses.

A visiting stay with benefits and expectations...

I am thrilled to be visiting Sciences Po and the Centre for Research on Social Inequalities – CRIS.  During this semester, I am teaching a seminar titled “Gendered Inequality in Latin America and Emerging Responses.”  I am happy to report that I have 28 students registered for the class.  Likewise, CRIS has offered me a space and I am happy to be participating in the weekly research discussions.  I hope that we might find some common points of interest that are comparable between Peru and other countries of Latin America and other regions of the world including, of course, France and Europe, especially considering how welfare models have evolved on this side of the Atlantic and elsewhere versus some Latin American countries´ current exploration of care systems.  
I will be giving a public lecture at the auditorium at the Rue des Saints-Peres on 22 October at 5 p.m. and another talk about my specific research in Peru at the Latin America Centre on 24 October at 5:30 p.m. (to be fully confirmed with the promotional flyers that are being prepared!).

The visiting faculty program is supported by the IdEx Université Paris Cité (ANR-18-IDEX-0001) and implemented through the partnership between Université Paris Cité and Sciences Po.

To find out more:

• Leda Perez Webpage (Universidad del Pacífico)
• Google Scholar
• Gender studies visiting faculty programme

The Center for Research on social InequalitieS is hiring 2 PhD candidates, for the WIDOW Project (ERC) managed by Zachary Van Winkle (Associate Professor at Sciences Po). Start date: September 1, 2025.

The WIDOW Project

Despite its growing relevance, widowhood research remains underdeveloped compared to other disruptive events, such as divorce. This ground-breaking research moves beyond the state-of-the-art in at least four ways to establish a social demography of widowhood.
(1) The foundation of this project lies in an innovative conceptual and methodological approach to the risk and vulnerability to widowhood. While risk aims at the probability and duration of widowhood, vulnerability focuses on its mental health and economic consequences. Current assessments of widowhood effects are limited to change in wellbeing directly after bereavement with a special focus on unexpected deaths. However, the most prevalent scenario entails a process of terminal health decline in the years before death. The consequences of the often neglected longer process of expected widowhood may be larger than the shorter process of unexpected widowhood.
Three ground-breaking pillars build on risk and vulnerability to examine:
(2) social inequalities by socioeconomic status, race-ethnicity and nativity, social support networks, gender and age, as well as (3) country differences and (4) change over time.

High-quality cross-sectional and longitudinal data sources will be harmonized and applied to an advanced set of statistical methods for up to 60 ageing countries varying in demographic trends and welfare systems from 1985 with projections to 2050. A social demography of widowhood will supplement fragmented evidence with systematic and comprehensive estimates on risk and vulnerability, provide insights into the challenges facing a growing widowed population and their family members, and facilitate new research on sustainable pension and elder care systems.

Responsabilities

- Completion of a PhD in Sociology by developing an independent research project within the remit of the WIDOW project on (A) the risk of widowhood or (B) the vulnerability to widowhood
- Quantitative data preparation and analysis
- Drafting, submission, and revision of own and collaborative English language academic articles
- Presentation and dissemination of own and collaborative project results at academic conferences
- Assistance with the fulfillment of reporting requirements

We offer

-  PhD supervision by Zachary Van Winkle, Principal Investigator. Candidates will have the option to have a member of the international WIDOW project’s expert committee as a second supervisor
- Enrollment in Sciences Po’s School of Research PhD program, including access to language classes and other topical and methodological seminars as well as an extensive international institutional network
- An internationally competitive salary
- Funding for multiple international conferences and trainings each year
- Well remunerated and flexible teaching possibilities (optional)
- Work space at the Saint-Thomas campus in central Paris and options for remote work
- Possible funding for a fourth year

Requirements

- Master’s degree in sociology, demography, economics, gerontology or a related field
- A background or strong interest in family sociology and/or demography as well as quantitative methods
- Previous experience with cross-sectional and/or longitudinal data preparation and analysis in Stata, R or a similar program
- An ability to work independently and collaboratively
- Excellent English language skills

Deadline: December 1, 2024.

Please downolad here the application procedure and complete description of the call (pdf, 128 Ko)

Alain Chenu, Professeur des universités émérite au CRIS vous propose une exposition inédite mettant en relief les travaux de Louis-Adolphe Bertillon (1821-1883), un des précurseurs en France de la démographie moderne. Médecin, Bertillon se fait statisticien pour mieux détecter et démontrer les causes de mort prématurée. 

Penser par cartes et diagrammes
La démographie figurée de Louis-adolphe Bertillon (1874)

Exposition présentée à Sciences Po, campus Saint-Thomas, espace MS00 (cour Ladreit de Lacharrière) du 11 au 23 septembre 2024, avec le soutien de Ined Éditions. 18 panneaux reprennent des planches cartographiques et des diagrammes réalisés à la main par Bertillon dans l'atlas "La démographie figurée de la France", publié par Masson aux frais de l'auteur. En rendant visible ses travaux statistiques par une expression graphique et figurative, Bertillon force ses contemporains - dont les décideurs de l'époque - à « penser autrement » les politiques de santé publique. 

Visites guidées et accès pour le public extérieur à la communauté Sciences Po : nous contacter. 

Ressources autour de Bertillon

• Ouvrage de Alain Chenu, Écrits sur la mortalité (1855-1877), Ined Éditions (2023)
• Chapitre de l'ouvrage en lien avec l'exposition (OpenEdition)
• Article dans La Vie des Idées (2023)
• Télécharger la présentation de l'expo (4 pages, pdf, 740 Ko)

Protection du marché du travail dans l’espace et dans le temps

Une typologie et une taxonomie des trajectoires de changement dans les pays de l’Organisation de coopération et de développement économiques (OCDE)

Emanuele Ferragina, Federico Danilo Filetti

Revue des politiques sociales et familiales, 2024/2, n°151, p. 39 - 58

Cet article est disponible en ligne sur CAIRN

L'étude interprète sur 30 ans l'évolution de la protection du marché du travail dans les pays de l'OCDE. La diversité institutionnelle et les trajectoires de changement sont comparées à travers quatre dimensions : la protection de l'emploi, la protection contre le chômage, le maintien du revenu et la politique active de l'emploi.

L'article propose une typologie des pays tenant compte des processus de changement entre 1990 et 2015, sur la base des niveaux de coordination et de solidarité, et une taxonomie caractérisant cinq évolutions : libéralisation, dualisation, flexicurité, dé-dualisation et protection renforcée.  

Parmi les enseignements, on constate que malgré un écart toujours présent, la grande majorité des économies coordonnées (idéal-type caractérisant une économie où les entreprises sont liées à acteurs et ressources hors marché) ont connu une baisse du niveau de protection du marché du travail et se sont rapprochées des économies libérales (à forte concurrence). D'autre part, une taxonomie à cinq catégories de trajectoires de changement (libéralisation, dualisation, flexicurité, dé-dualisation, protection renforcée) montre que ces trajectoires ne sont pas toujours dépendantes ni cohérentes avec les variétés institutionnelles précédemment identifiées dans la littérature scientifique.   

The paper develops a typology for processes of change between 1990 and 2015, and clusters countries on the basis of coordination and solidarity levels and a  fivefold taxonomy of countries’ trajectories of change by liberalisation, dualisation, flexibility, de-dualisation and higher protection.

Despite a persistent gap, a large majority of coordinated market economies, which have experienced a decrease in the level of labour market protection, have moved closer to liberal market economies. The taxonomy of countries’ trajectories of change shows that these trajectories are not always path-dependent and consistent with institutional varieties previously developed in the scientific literature.

Variétés de protection du marché du travail en 2015 par pays

We're recuiting a full-time, Assistant Professor (tenure-track). Position beginning on January 1st 2025. The successful candidate will be affiliated to the Center for Research on social InequalitieS (CRIS). Candidates should have a PhD.

This assistant professorship position is designed to reinforce and complement our expertise in the study of environmental inequalities. We welcome applications from candidates with a recent PhD in the social or environmental sciences and with an ambitious research agenda in the area of social stratification and inequality, targeting publications in leading disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. All disciplines are welcome as far as the research has strong connections with the social sciences.

Rising inequality and environmental degradation are two critical challenges of our time. Our knowledge about the interplay between socio-economic inequality, environmental degradation, and environmental policies remains limited. More research is needed to measure these inequalities, understand their micro-, meso- and macro-level mechanisms, and identify policies to address them.

Three research domains are particularly relevant to this position:

• inequalities in contributions to environmental damage
• inequalities in the impacts of environmental degradation
• inequalities in the capacities to impact environmental policies.

This position will contribute to strengthening environmental research and teaching in the context of the Sciences Po TIERED project (Transforming Interdisciplinary Education and Research for Evolving Democracies), organized jointly by the Open Institute for Digital Transformation and the Institute for Environmental Transformations.

The successful candidate will be expected to play an active role in the center’s collective activities: seminars, academic events, participation in research networks. The candidate should also engage in responding to national and international calls to fund research projects. The successful candidate will teach in Sciences Po’s undergraduate and graduate programs (in Paris and in other campuses).

Please read the job description and application procedure here (pdf, 120 ko)

Deadline for applications September 30th, 2024. This position is expected to start on January 1st 2025. 

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, June 21st 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K011 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Fatherhood and Men’s Working Hours in a Part-Time Economy

Thijs Bol

Professor of Sociology
University of Amsterdam

How do fathers adjust their working hours after the birth of their first child?
Though the impact of childbirth on women’s employment is well-established, less is known about its effect on fathers.
We investigate this question in the Netherlands (2006-2017), a country characterized by a high prevalence of part-time work. We focus on two contexts that might shape the extent to which first-time fathers reduce their working hours after childbirth: the household and the organization. For this purpose, we use detailed longitudinal register data.

The results reveal that men’s employment displays a high degree of stability around the first childbirth: even in the Dutch “part-time economy,” the vast majority of fathers remain full-time employed.
We do find substantial heterogeneity in labor market responses following childbirth. Fathers earning relatively less than their partner pre-childbirth are more likely to scale down their working hours. The organizational gender composition is also associated with working hours reductions following childbirth. Although we find that fathers’ employment is contingent on both the household and organizational context, the substantial stability in men’s labor supply remains an obstacle to a more equal division of (un)paid labor.
Personal Website

Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, June 7th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Estimating the Impact of Prenatal Opioid Exposure on Infant Health:
Evidence from Multiple Identification Strategies

Lawrence (Lonnie) Berger

Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor
Associate Vice Chancellor for Research in the Social Sciences
Sandra Rosenbaum School of Social Work, University of Wisconsin-Madison

The adverse effects of the opioid epidemic in the United States are well documented. Moreover, high rates of prenatal opioid exposure, particularly among disadvantaged populations, has generated concern that a large number of children may be at risk of poor prenatal and, potentially, lifelong health and development. Whereas research has established that maternal opioid use during pregnancy is associated with a host of negative child outcomes, prenatal exposure is also strongly correlated with other socioeconomic and psychosocial risks to child development. As such, existing studies have yet to identify plausibly causal effects. This study uses longitudinal administrative data from Wisconsin and six identification strategies—standard (e.g., OLS) regressions with extensive controls; propensity score matched regressions; inverse probability (of prenatal exposure) weighted regressions; sibling fixed-effects regressions (comparing exposed and nonexposed siblings); cousin fixed-effects regressions (comparing exposed children to unexposed children of their mothers’ sisters), and instrumental variables regressions—to produce bounded estimates of the plausibly causal effects of prenatal opioid exposure on multiple domains of child health during the first year of life. Comparing estimates produced using each strategy provides new insights into whether associations of prenatal opioid exposure with specific aspects of infant health are likely causal and, if so, at what orders of magnitude. 

To find out more about Lawrence (Lonnie) Berger (cv)

Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

What is the digital divide today, and its evolution since the 1990s, given the emergence of new technologies? Should be talk about digital inequalities?
Today mobile broadband internet is accessible pretty much everywhere. Why is class still mattering? Why does that still a social divide around people of different class, ethnicity, gender?
What is going to happen to digital inequalities as, digital technology becomes cheaper and cheaper, more available, better, speed is available, better devices, are available at lower prices ?
What inequalities in the use of artificial intelligence?

Listen the podcast On Digital Inequality and its Political implications, 40 min., may 2024, part of the Sergei Guriev conversations [Ausha - Also available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music...]

As a digital scholar, It's been both fun and challenging to track digital inequalities because they're changing so rapidly!

From the 1990s to 2000, Twitter was launched, YouTube was diffused... and so there was all this utopianism around, how anyone can, be a content producer, but I sought to really look at who are these people creating online content.

I do want to challenge this idea that everyone is online.

There's a lot of arguments around how, especially among youth, too much digital technology can impact, negative, have a negative impacts on mental health. But it's actually, people that have less internet access that have, lower self-reports of social well-being.

My research switches the causal arrow and really looks at how do societal differences shape the use of technology itself.

People who are in more precarious work positions, are much less likely to feel safe posting online something that might be perceived as as controversial.

Soutenance de la thèse La culture du consentement : Recompositions des rapports de genre et de la sexualité depuis MeToo, par Rébecca Lévy-Guillain, à Sciences Po, le mardi 11 juin 2024, 14h30. 

Composition du jury :
Marie Bergström, chargée de recherche INED (codirectrice)
Sébastien Chauvin, professeur associé, Université de Lausanne
Marta Domínguez-Folgueras, associate professor, Sciences Po - CRIS (codirectrice)
Christophe Giraud, professeur des universités, Université Paris Cité (rapporteur)
Camille Masclet, chargée de recherche, CNRS/EHESS/CESSP
Emmanuelle Santelli, directrice de recherche, CNRS-Centre Max Weber (rapportrice)

Depuis le début du moment MeToo, la question du consentement sexuel devient centrale dans les débats publics et s’accompagne de la diffusion d’un modèle de « bonne » sexualité égalitaire, imprégné par les savoirs féministes et thérapeutiques. La sexualité et les rapports de genre s’en trouvent-ils transformés ?

Au croisement de la sociologie du genre, de la sexualité et de la socialisation, et à partir de l’analyse d’un corpus de sources écrites et de la conduite de 130 entretiens biographiques auprès de femmes et d’hommes âgé.es de 18 à 65 ans issu.es de milieux sociaux différents, cette thèse s’intéresse aux réceptions individuelles socialement différenciées de la morale sexuelle égalitaire.

Celles et ceux qui s’approprient la morale sexuelle égalitaire ont en commun d’avoir vécu des violences symboliques dont l’effet est intense ou durable, de trouver légitimes les savoirs féministes et thérapeutiques, et de se trouver dans des configurations relationnelles rendant possible le changement de leurs représentations.
Bien que les hommes continuent de prendre les initiatives et que les femmes parviennent difficilement à dire non, elles et ils problématisent dorénavant l’inadéquation entre leurs pratiques et leurs aspirations morales.
Les hommes résolvent rapidement cette dissonance et déploient des stratégies de présentation de soi pourvoyeuses de prestige. Les femmes en revanche s’engagent dans des spirales d’autodévalorisation qui limitent leur latitude d’action et cherchent activement à mettre en cohérence leurs conduites sexuelles avec leur idéologie. Le contrôle de la sexualité féminine ainsi que les inégalités de genre sont alors reconduits sous de nouvelles formes.

Accès aux personnes invitées et publics internes à Sciences Po.

Rébécca Lévy-Guillain est l'auteure de l'ouvrage Le désir est un sport de combat aux éditions Arkhé. 

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, May 17th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

The emergence of health gaps in early life:
the role of multidomain childhood deprivation

Lidia Panico

Professeure des Universités, Sciences Po - CRIS

Evidence suggests that inequalities in health begin from the starting gate and that early childhood is crucial to understand the production of health inequalities in later life. A body of research has put an emphasis on multi-domain deprivation as a tool to better understand the lived experience of childhood disadvantage, rather than classic measures such as income poverty. However, the health inequalities literature still uses relatively simple concepts of (parental) “socio-economic status”, such as income, to describe health gaps in the early years.

In previous work, we proposed a conceptual framework and methods to construct multidomain, longitudinal indicators of early childhood deprivation (see below). In this paper, we apply these indicators to describe how multidomain deprivation links to early health. We will present results from the nationally representative French birth cohort Elfe, as well as preliminary results with harmonized data from the US Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Birth cohort (ECLS-B) and the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) to examine whether different national settings produce different patterns of inequalities across countries.

• Barbara Castillo Rico, Marion Leturcq, Lidia Panico, « La pauvreté des enfants à la naissance en France. Résultats de l'enquête Elfe », Revue des Politiques Sociales et Familiales, 2019/2-3, n° 131-132, p. 35-49.
  [EN] Childhood poverty and deprivation at the starting gate in France. Examples using Elfe survey (p. 175-188)
• Marion Leturcq & Lidia Panico, "The long-term effects of parental separation on childhood multidimensional deprivation: a lifecourse approach", Social Indicators Research, vol. 144, n° 2, p. 921-954.

 Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

Que conclure du Pass Culture ?

Voix croisées sur l'économie, podcast, 3 mars, 34 minutes

En écoute sur la plateforme Spotify

Cet épisode animé par Aurélie Lachkar reçoit Philippe Coulangeon et Françoise Benhamou (Professeure d'économie, Présidente du Cercle des économistes).

Le Pass culture, inspiré d'un précédent italien, est l'une des réalisations phare de la politique culturelle menée sous les gouvernements d'Emmanuel Macron. Doté de 260 millions d'euros, il comporte deux volets, individuel et social. Il permet d'acheter des biens culturels pour les jeunes, et de financer des projets d'éducation artistique et culturelle dans le cadre scolaire. Mais quels sont ses objectifs, qu'en est-il de son usage, de son impact ? Ces questions font débat.

Conçu pour favoriser l'accès des jeunes à la culture pour renforcer et diversifer les pratiques culturelles sur tout le territoire, il prête à controverse dès que l'on aborde la question de son évaluation, plusieurs notions étant sujette à interprêtation dans ce domaine.

Les chercheurs sont donc invités à poser les termes du débat :

• Le frein majeur pour accèder à l'offre culturelle est-il d'ordre financier ? Le Pass est-il une incitation à la pratique culturelle ?
• Quels sont les autres facteurs qui déterminent ces usages, consommations et pratiques ? Où sont les barrières ?
• Quelles sont les limites d'une politique culturelle tournée vers la demande ?
• Quelle prise en compte des inégalités liées à la socialisation familiale et celles liées à la médiation de l'accès aux biens culturels ?
• Y-a-t'il des inégalités territoriales ?
• Quels dispositifs d'accompagnement (y compris une offre de transport) ?
• Quels effets d'aubaine ? Faut-il questionner son aspect universel ?
• Que dire des choix faits par les jeunes ? Le Manga superstar... Quels sont les producteurs qui bénéficient indirectement de ces subventions ? Est-ce justifié ?
• Le Pass permet il une légitimation, une labellisation, de produits et pratiques jusque là non prises en compte par la politique culturelle ?
• Qu'apporte le nouveau volet orienté vers le cadre scolaire ? Est-ce une évolution correctrice ? S'orienter vers le système éducatif, est-ce un tournant historique ?
• Son coût est-il excessif ? Le Pass est-il pérenne, notamment s'il y a plus de demandes ?

Philippe Coulangeon amène des éléments de réflexion sur la difficulté d'appréhender par les pouvoirs publics le "désir de biens culturels" et la nécessité d'une évaluation et d'une expérimentation pour quantifier finement et sur le long terme (y compris à l'âge adulte) les effets induits par ce dispositif.

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, April 26th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Focusing in on life course processes to understand
how racism patterns ethnic inequities in health

Laia Becares

Professor, King's College London

Ethnic inequalities in health are entrenched and persistent in the UK and elsewhere.

This seminar explores the role of racism, experienced over the life course, in structuring ethnic inequalities in health.

Anchored around key tenets of life course theory, this presentation will discuss findings from multiple studies that centre racism as the root cause of ethnic inequalities, exploring life course mechanisms that pattern stark ethnic inequities in later life.

• Biography
• Publications

 Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, April 12th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Is high culture delegitimized?
Cohort variations in participation rates in the arts in France and the United States (1973-2018)

Stéphane Dorin

Professor, University of Limoges

Philippe Coulangeon

Senior Scientist, CNRS, Sciences Po - CRIS

This study examines the decline in highbrow cultural participation since the last decades of the 20th century with regard to the debates and cross-fertilization of European, especially French, and American cultural sociology.

We use data from four decades of large-scale surveys in France and the US to compare the two countries with regard to the role of high culture in social stratification and the relation of more recent cohorts to what is usually considered 'high culture.' (i.e., the most institutionalized and broadly recognized forms of prestigious culture throughout Europe and the Americas).

Focusing on two emblematic and debated high culture practices – reading literature and attending classical music concerts – we implemented the APC-I model (Luo and Hodges, 2022) to disentangle the age, period, and cohort dimensions of the observed temporal change. We identified significant inter-cohort differences and intra-cohort dynamics in the evolution of participation in high culture in both the US and France, even though educational attainment remains a major driving factor of high culture participation rates.

These cohort effects reflect the time lag observed in the chronology of secondary education expansion in the two countries. However, they are stronger in France, and there are two different patterns for older cohorts between the two countries, whereas younger cohorts tend to converge in their declining participation rate in artistic activities.

We also address the sociological question of cohort behavior and identify various patterns of intra-cohort life course dynamics that both confirm and challenge the usual notions of temporal dynamics of taste formation and cultural participation, beyond the assumption of constant and additive cohort effects.

The comparison between the two countries highlights the changing definition of cultural capital over time and place and its relationship to educational expansion, which leads us to challenge the idea of a decline in the arts as the major form of cultural capital in France and the US.

 Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, April 5th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Socioemotional Development during Adolescence:
Evidence from a Large Macro Shock

Ghazala Azmat

Professeure des Universités
Sciences - Po, Department of Economics

(joint with Katja Kaufmann and Yasemin Ozdemir)

We take advantage of a large quasi-exogenous shock to study the development of socioemotional skills during early adolescence and their links to long-term behavior and labor market outlook. Using novel, longitudinal, microdata on cohorts of East German adolescents before and after a large macro shock (the German Reunification), we causally estimate the impact on socioemotional skills (self-confidence and impulse control), finding negative effects in the short run.
These effects are substantially larger among those affected by the shock in early adolescence (13/14 years old), relative to later adolescence (16/17 years old). Changes in socioemotional skills have a lasting (negative) impact on them as adults, especially among those affected early in their adolescence, in terms of externalizing behavior (e.g., physical fighting), behavioral control problems (i.e., substance abuse), internalizing behavior (i.e., mental health) and in their (labor-market) optimism and expectations.
This study highlights the permanent effects of uncertainty on socioemotional skills during formative years.

To learn more about Ghazala AZMAT, consult her website

Open Seminar. Please register here to join us!

Belonging to the nation, belonging to Europe?
Varieties of particularism and universalism in migrant identity negotiation

Maricia Fischer-Souan
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Post-doctoral Fellow
CRIS & CÉRIUM (Université de Montréal)

Journal of Contemporary European Studies
Published online 2024, February 8th
doi: 10.1080/14782804.2024.2311200 (Taylor & Francis Online)

This article focuses on the relationship between migrants’ identification with the national (destination) community and European identification. How first-generation ‘immigrant patriots’, who consider themselves to be French, British, or Spanish (regardless of formal citizenship status) relate to European identity.

Through a series of case studies of South Asian, North African, and South American migrants’ identity narratives in the metropolitan areas of Paris, Madrid, and London, Maricia Fischer-Souan  argues that immigrant relationships to Europe vary a great deal. In addition, she finds that (dis)inclinations toward the supranational dimension have a lot to do with how migrants achieve and conceive of belonging in the new homeland in the first place.
Beginning with the ambivalent figure of the postcolonial migrant subject as a starting point for the analysis, she sketches out two different pathways toward inclusion at the (sub)national level that produce different relationships to the supranational level. One involves particularistic and culturally-defined orientations to belonging, while the other takes a universalistic and civic-based understanding of membership. Whether or not Europe is included in the identity equation depends on whether the conception of European membership is coherent with the identity work undertaken to achieve a sense of national belonging.

An important contribution of this article is to highlight how elements of national (host society) cultural repertoires resonate with migrant vocabularies of belonging, yet – crucially – are filtered by experiences and processes of racialization and Othering.

Consciousness and experience of stigmatisation and exclusion can be offset by personal narratives of postcolonial cultural proximity. European colonial legacies can thus be construed in terms of cultural and human connections, in addition to oppression and violence. Whether postcolonial migrants view these historical connections as being undermined or not by intra-EU connections may depend on the ways in which they achieve a sense of belonging with respect to their society of adoption.

L’étude des inégalités globales a connu ces dernières décennies un essor remarquable : inégalités économiques, sociales et environnementales ont fait l’objet de travaux théoriques et empiriques de plus en plus nombreux, visibles et influents partout dans le monde. Le Laboratoire sur les inégalités mondiales (World Inequality Lab) et le Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS) s’associent pour la première édition du Global Inequality Research Award (GiRA). Remis tous les 2 ans, il distingue des chercheuses et chercheurs de toutes disciplines, ayant contribué de manière décisive à la compréhension des inégalités globales.

Le GiRA valorise des travaux majeurs dans le domaine des inégalités mondiales comprenant deux dimensions clés : des recherches sur les inégalités menées aux quatre coins du monde ; et le traitement de l’inégalité en tant qu’objet complexe qu'il convient d'aborder sous tous les angles pour être pleinement appréhendé, compris et finalement atténué.

Pour cette première édition, le prix GiRA est décerné conjointement à Bina Argawal et James K. Boyce pour leurs travaux essentiels dans le champ des inégalités sociales et environnementales.


Bina Agarwal (Professeure en développement économique et environnement, Université de Manchester), est l’auteure de travaux pionniers sur les inégalités de genre, la gouvernance environnementale, l’environnementalisme féministe et les inégalités environnementales.

James K. Boyce (Professeur émérite en économie, Université du Massachusetts à Amherst) est l’auteur de travaux fondateurs sur les relations entre inégalités sociales et dégradations environnementales et a largement contribué à structurer le champ de l’économie politique de l’environnement.

Les deux lauréats sont invités à recevoir leur prix et à donner un aperçu de la portée de leurs travaux lors d’une conférence à Paris, respectivement à l’automne et au printemps 2024, organisée en lien avec l’initiative Social-Ecological Transitions (SET) de Sciences Po.

James Boyce recevra le prix GiRA le vendredi 5 avril 2024 à Sciences Po en Amphithéâtre Claude Erignac à 19h15 et dressera un panorama de ses travaux, 30 ans après la parution de "Inequality as a cause of environmental degradation (pdf, 159 ko)".
La conférence sera introduite par Lucas Chancel et Éloi Laurent.
L’entrée est libre dans la limite des places disponibles. Inscription obligatoire pour les publics externes à Sciences Po.

Le comité scientifique de la première édition du Prix GiRA est composé de Lucas Chancel (Sciences Po/CNRS, CRIS and World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics), Éloi Laurent (Sciences Po/OFCE), Thomas Piketty (EHESS & World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics) et Mirna Safi (Sciences Po/CNRS, CRIS).

Cette conférence est organisée dans le cadre de l’initiative SET (Social-Ecological Transitions) portée par l’OFCE, le CEE et le CSO, qui vise à encourager les collaborations entre chercheur(e)s travaillant à la frontière des questions sociales et environnementales, au-delà des limites disciplinaires ou institutionnelles. En savoir plus sur la SET

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, March 8th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

The Startup Nation Paradox:
How the French Welfare State Amplifies Gender Inequalities

Jen Schradie

Assistant Professor, Sciences Po - CRIS

Does the welfare state paradox apply to the startup tech sector? If so, how?

This theory posits that welfare states improve gender equality but not with leadership positions because women are perceived to overuse state-supported family leave policies. At the same time, digital technology was supposed to flatten societal differences. An early view of the dot-com era was that anyone with a novel idea or a computer could launch a startup. This Silicon Valley Ideology suggests that Internet technology can help overcome previous work-place hierarchies and inequalities because the playing field is more level in a networked capitalist society.

In this multi-method analysis of the French digital startup ecosystem, I find that the welfare state paradox does not operate with the tech sector in the same way as with existing corporate structures. Instead, the French state, in this case, indirectly benefits men more than women but not at the point of hiring or promotion. Instead, the mechanism is through the welfare state itself: government-funded unemployment and childcare benefits. Men are more strategically able to leverage employment payments as an investor while women wrestle with whether or not to make use of these payments at all, and due to family responsibilities women cannot always take advantage of limited childcare options as a new entrepreneur. Simply, a mismatch has emerged between policy design and market forms, especially with less formal, higher-risk work arrangements. The result is a startup nation paradox.

Please register here to join us!

Choisir l'école privée ?
Discussion autour de l'ouvrage
À l'école primaire catholique: Une éducation bien ordonnée

Émilie Grisez, Éditions PUF, EAN 9782130836391, 2023, 280 p.

Lundi 4 mars 2024, 17h30-19h, Sciences Po, Campus Saint-Thomas, salle K011

Cette table ronde propose une réflexion sur les dynamiques éducatives de l'enseignement privé catholique, en explorant l'ouvrage paru en novembre 2023 aux PUF "À l'école primaire catholique. Une éducation bien ordonnée".

L'autrice de l'ouvrage, Émilie Grisez, sera accompagnée de deux chercheuses en sociologie de l'éducation pour aborder les thèmes et questions traités dans l'ouvrage, en particulier dans les chapitres portant sur l'imbrication des instances de socialisation et le projet éducatif de l'école.

Elles examineront les spécificités de l'éducation dispensée dans les écoles privées catholiques, et notamment ce qui les distinguent des écoles publiques et d'autres écoles privées dites "alternatives".

Cette rencontre offrira une plateforme d'échange pour explorer diverses perspectives sur l'éducation privée et le rôle de l'enseignement catholique dans le paysage éducatif contemporain.

Émilie Grisez est doctorante en sociologie au Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS, Sciences Po – CNRS) et à l’Institut national d’études démographiques (Ined). Ses recherches portent sur la sociologie de l’éducation, de l’enfance, de la famille, des religions et des inégalités.

Amelia Legavre est Maîtresse de conférences à l'Inspé de Bretagne, laboratoire CREAD.
Elle s'intéresse aux méthodes pédagogiques de la petite enfance à l'université, en particulier celles faisant appel à l'expression personnelle des enfants et des jeunes.Elle mobilise la sociologie du curriculum, des émotions, et de la famille. Sa thèse a porté sur les pédagogies dites "alternatives" au niveau du primaire, et leurs modalités visant à permettre aux élèves de partager leurs intérêts et leurs besoins au sein de la classe.

Audrey Chamboredon est doctorante en sociologie au Centre de Recherche sur les Inégalités Sociales (CRIS, Sciences Po – CNRS). Ses recherches portent sur l'articulation des choix résidentiels et scolaires des familles dans les métropoles de Lille et Toulouse.

Cette table ronde est ouverte sur inscription préalable : merci de vous enregistrer ici

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, February 16th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

The multiverse of social class: a multi-scheme, multi-outcome
and multi-country analysis of class stratification

Carlo Barone

Professeur des universités, Sciences Po, CRIS, LIEPP

Social class is a central concept in sociology but sociologists have paid limited attention to its measurement.

This study contrasts the traditional ‘big class’ approach with more recent meso- and micro-class approaches to class analysis with respect to their capacity to explain inequalities in education, income and labor market outcomes, social attitudes and voting.

Different class theories suggest competing mechanisms behind social class stratification and assume primacy of different levels of occupational aggregation. Assessing 10 class schemes across 13 outcomes using data from up to 66 countries and more that 650.000 individuals, we offer the most comprehensive multi-scheme, multi-country analysis of class stratification.

We measure scheme performance in terms of average effect strength and model fit and carry out both pooled analyses and cross-national comparisons to assess whether the construct validity of class schemes varies across countries.

Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, February 9th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Pivots, Populism, and Moral Panics:
The Impact of Trump’s Position Reversal on Facemasks

Bartholomew Konechni

PhD Student, Sciences Po - CRIS

Populist leaders are often held responsible for their followers' poor compliance with public health recommendations. But what happens when populist leaders change position and endorse previously discouraged behaviours? This scenario is understudied in extant literature.

To fill this gap, the present work examines Trump’s pivot over masks on 1st July 2020, when he first encouraged their use.

Using a difference-in-differences (DiD) design, the paper finds that whilst Trump’s pivot lifted Republican’s propensity to wear facemasks, it didn’t change views about facemasks’ efficacy.
However, this study does find that Trump’s intervention was more impactful amongst Republicans living in parts of the country worst hit by the early-summer 2020 spike in COVID cases, suggesting that his capacity to shape behaviours lay not so much in persuading followers but in capitalising on a moment of moral panic when individuals were open to adopting new behaviours.

Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, February 2nd 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Why Do Young Adults Co-Reside with Their Parents?

Arthur Acolin

Associate Professor, Runstad Department of Real Estate,
College of Built Environments, University of Washington

Nearly one in every two adults aged 18–29 currently lives with their parents in the US, compared to slightly more than one in four in 1960.
The literature focuses on changing labor market conditions and marriage- childbearing delays to account for this shift.
Using a Blinder-Oaxaca procedure, we identify a role for housing affordability, measured by market level median housing rent or price to median household income ratios, as an additional factor in the increase in co-residency since but not before 2000.
We endogenize the marriage-childbearing decision with a Heckman selection model and attribute up to a quarter of the observed 9-percentage-point increase in the co-residence share between 2000 and 2021 to a decrease in housing affordability.

We find a non-linear relationship between affordability and co- residence with the relationship strongest in the least affordable metros where affordability constraints might be more binding. Overall, these results show changes in market level housing affordability are associated with the increase in young adult co-residence in the US over the first two decades of the 21 st century.

(Co-authors: Desen Lin, Cal State Fullerton, and Susan Wachter, University of Pennsylvania)

Please register here to join us!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, January 19th 2024, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

Daily use of social media increases body dissatisfaction of adolescent girls
in a large cross-cultural survey

Thomas Breda

CNRS - Paris School of Economics

We provide a large-scale investigation of the relationship between social media consumption and body dissatisfaction among a sample of more than 50,000 teenagers between 15 and 16 y.o.
This relation is positive and large for girls—higher use of social networks is associated with higher dissatisfaction about their body—and negative for boys.
The positive relation for girls is observed in all eight countries included in the study, covering very different cultural contexts (e.g., Georgia, Ireland, Spain, Mexico, Panama or Hong Kong).

It is observed for all girls, no matter their body mass index (BMI), their academic performance, and their socioeconomic background. Instrumenting social networks consumption by students’ or students’ peers’ internet access at home while controlling finely for other students’ or students’ peers’ household characteristics finally suggests that the relationship between social media consumption and girls' body dissatisfaction could be causal.

Please register here!

Inequality and the Environment Symposium for Early-Career Researchers

Organized by Sciences Po's Center for Research on social InequalitieS,
in partnership with the World Inequality Lab - Paris School of Economics
and the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy - Harvard Kennedy School
Thursday, 18 January 2024
Sciences Po, 1 Place Saint-Thomas d’Aquin 75007 Paris

Rising inequality and environmental degradation are two critical challenges of our time. The social sciences have increasingly focused on their interactions over the last two decades (Martinez Alier 2003, Laurent 2012, Chancel 2020). Nevertheless, our knowledge about the interplay between socio-economic inequality, environmental degradation, and environmental policies remains limited. The literature on inequality and the environment presents various conceptual, empirical, and theoretical gaps hindering societies’ ability to effectively address these issues.

Substantively, important questions remain unanswered, such as: How can governments address inequality while averting the exacerbation of climate and biodiversity crises, both domestically and internationally? Which welfare regimes could be compatible with deep decarbonization? What types of political coalitions can support these changes? What role have income and wealth inequality played in accelerating or slowing environmental degradation? How can public policies promote changes in citizens’ environmental behaviour while taking social inequalities into account? 

This symposium aims to present, discuss, and foster innovative approaches to social science research on environmental inequality across three broad research streams : (i) Inequalities in the impacts of environmental degradation; (ii) Inequalities in contributions to environmental damage; and (iii) Inequalities in capacities to act against pollution or to cope with environmental policies.

PROGRAM

• Welcome and introduction
• Session 1 Global Inequality of Contributions (9:10-11:10, plenary, location B108 Salon scientifique)

- Federica Cappelli - Unequal Contributions to CO2 Emissions along the Income Distribution Within and Between Countries

- Markus Nabernegg - Environmental Engel Curves with Predicted Consumption of High-Income Households, Applied to Ecuador

- Elisa Palagi - Revisiting the Emission-Inequality Nexus across Stages of Development

- Yannic Rehm - The Carbon Footprint of Capital – Evidence from France, Germany and the US based on Distributional Environmental Accounts

• Parallel session 2A: Inequality in Policy Impacts (11:30-13:30, location B108 Salon scientifique)

 - Philipp Bothe - Inequality in Exposure to Harmful Air Pollution

- Clara Dallaire-Fortier - A Balancing Act? Local Fiscal Resilience After Mine Closures

- Jacob Greenspon - Locally-tailored Policy Responses to the U.S. Decarbonization Job Transition

- Lena Kilian - Achieving Emission Reductions without Furthering Social Inequality: Lessons from the 2007 Economic Crisis and the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Parallel session 2B: Inequality of Impact: Climate Shocks (11:30-13:30, location CS16)

- Filippo Pavanello - Adapting to Heat Extremes with Unequal Access to Cooling: Evidence from India

- Risto Conte Keivabu - Temperature and School Absences: Evidence from England

- Matteo Coronese - Raided by the Storm: Impacts on Income and Wages from Three Decades of U.S. Thunderstorms

- Giulia Valenti - Temperature and Health Capital: Long-Term Consequences of Exposure in Early Childhood

• Parallel session 3A: Inequality of Capacity to Act and Political Representation (14:30 - 16:30, location B108 Salon scientifique)

- Mélusine Boon-Falleur - Leveraging social cognition to promote effective climate change mitigation

- Matthias Petel - Litigating for Future Generations... and for the Just Transition? The Unequal Integration of Climate Justice Dimensions by the Courts

- Laura Silva - Climate Extremes and Socio-Political Attitudes: A European Social Survey Analysis

- Nathalie Vigna - Who is ready to pay for protecting the environment? Social and spatial divides in Western countries

• Parallel session 3B: Climate Inequalities: Contributions, Impacts, Capacities (Urban segregation, elite strategies, policies) (14:30 - 16:30, location CS16)

- Jens Ergon - Inequality and Emissions: Managing the Interlinked Challenges of a Just Transformation

- Thomas Neier - The Green Divide: A Spatial Analysis of Segregation-Based Environmental Inequality

- Shay O’Brien - Parasite: The Relational Continuity of Extraction in a Settler Colonial Upper Class

- Martina Pardy - Climate Impacts and Wealth Inequality: Global Evidence from a Novel Subnational Dataset

• Session 4: Climate Inequalities and Poverty and Concluding Remarks (16:45-18:00 plenary, location B108 Salon scientifique)

- Thomas Bézy - The Incidence of Flood Risk

- Manisha Mukherjee - Scorching Heat and Shrinking Horizons: The Impact of Rising Temperatures on Marriages and Migration in Rural India

Organizing committee

Carlo Barone (co-chair), Lucas Chancel (co-chair), Eloi Laurent, Allison Rovny.

Registration for this event is closed. However, if you are interested in attending, please send us an email, and we will do our best to accommodate your request.

Women in Times of Crisis: Rethinking the Extraordinary and the Everyday

Columbia University, Sciences Po, Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University

Alliance on-line conference, Friday, October 18, 2024

The 21st century has been one of crisis, including the geopolitical shock of September 11, 2001, the global financial crisis (2007-2008), the Covid-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine (2022) and the new war in Israel and Gaza (2023). These events have come on top of disasters associated with climate change, and the anxieties stemming from populist political discourses. Such multiple, extraordinary phenomena have led to extraordinary policy responses, stretching governmental powers; they have altered distributions of resources, and disrupted the organization of everyday life. As they have hardened inequalities, crisis politics and policies have also exacerbated polarization and favored rising illiberalism.

In these contexts, women have often, though not always, been disadvantaged: the pandemic, for example, brought increased gender-based violence as well as excess burdens of care; climate change- related displacement has affected women and children disproportionately; war and conflict have – yet again – been marked by sexual violence and casualities among women as non-combatants; while illiberalism has been characterized by direct attacks on gender-related rights (regarding sexual and reproductive health, freedom of expression and mobilization in the public square).

Researchers and advocates have examined the impacts of these crises on gender relations, and, specifically, on the status of women in relation to the intersectional factors that determine their life chances. Such analyses explore specific situations (e.g., the pandemic or the war in Ukraine), uncovering the gender-differentiated effects of the policies and politics they have led to. The specific crises to which they refer provide a temporal/spatial frame – but the significance of ‘thinking through’ crisis as an episteme is rarely thematized. Turning points that alter pre-existing equilibria and which are located in specific series of events, that we denote as “crises,” are often framing devices whose implications remain unexamined.

Two sets of implications of these analyses need to be discussed. Substantively, this research often reveals how the effect of a particular crisis reflects underlying structural factors. The crisis, in other words, illuminates the everyday as much as the extraordinary. As such, looking at crises ought to allow us to re-examine our perspectives on social organization more broadly, and not simply at a particular moment: we can debate feminist theory by ‘thinking through’ the literature on crisis.
Epistemologically, the literature of crisis invites a reflection on crisis as an episteme: as a way of making sense of the world that simultaneously highlights rupture in social life, and which justifies such rupture as driving political and policy responses. The “work” that “crisis” does is worth investigating per se. What does it mean for feminist scholarship as well as policy-making that we lurch from crisis to crisis? How useful is the notion of “crisis” really? What does it allow us to think, and what does it obscure?

This on-line conference, co-organized by Columbia University, Sciences Po (Paris), and Paris 1 Sorbonne-University, seeks to bring together scholars in the Alliance network who have examined the impacts of recent crises on women to ask both what we have learned substantively about gender relations when policies are formulated in apparently extraordinary – and dire – contexts, and how our frames of reference have held up. In this rapid succession of critical moments, does the distinction between the extraordinary and the everyday, or, to put it somewhat differently, between ordinary life and times of crisis, continue to make sense? In which contexts is the distinction relevant? The conference seeks, therefore, to address both the substantive and the epistemological lessons for the analysis of women’s conditions of the recent past.

Independent of the type of crisis, women seem disproportionately vulnerable. As a result, equity between women and men is under further pressure, in all regions of the world (including in high income countries), and women’s economic, social and political participation is increasingly at risk.
Feminist scholars traditionally aim to understand the nature of gender inequalities in societies which are often at the intersection of income, country-of-origin, age and family status.
This conference intends to bring together social scientists in the Alliance network who work on gender-specific topics related to crises such as:
• climate change
• the global pandemic
• economic downturn and/or economic change (linked to AI, for example)
• demographic shocks linked to migration, fertility and/or mortality
• war and conflict
• illiberalism and/or political radicalization

Besides assembling empirical work about the impact of crises on women across the world, the conference will allow a holistic theoretical framework of women in times of crisis to be formulated. By considering different crises not only as risks of pushback, but as potential turning points, we may discuss how different crises affect feminist thinking, what the constant risk of crisis implies for feminism today, and what work on women in crises has brought and can bring in terms of policy reactions, dangers and opportunities.

The conference will take place on Friday, October 18th, 2024, as an on-line webinar, between 2 pm CET/8 am EST and 8 pm CET/2 pm EST.

The conference is part of the Alliance Program, but external submissions are also welcome. It aims to produce scientific contributions to the field, as well as policy-briefs for government, public institutions and other actors. The conference will also help to link up researchers in view of creating a more or less formal network of persons working in the areas covered by the conference. The conference will eventually figure as kick-off meeting for work on a joint publication (not mandatory).

Submission deadline: February 29, 2024. Proposals for communications should be about 300 words long and include a short biography of authors (institution, position, main research and teaching activities). Communications should be sent to Angela Greulich (angela.greulich@sciencespo.fr) and Nicholas Sowels (nicholas.sowels@univ-paris1.fr).

Scientific committee: Laurie Breban (Université Paris 1), Ariane Dupont (Université Paris 1), Yasmine Ergas (Columbia), Marta Dominguez Folgueras (Sciences Po - CRIS), Angela Greulich (Sciences Po - CRIS), Emmanuelle Kalfon (Université Paris 1), Hélène Périvier (Sciences Po - PRESAGE), Nadeera Rajapakse (Université Paris 1), Nicholas Sowels (Université Paris 1).
Organization committee: Angela Greulich (Sciences Po - CRIS), Nicholas Sowels (Université Paris 1).

PDF Version here (165Ko)

À l'école primaire catholique
Une éducation bien ordonnée

Émilie Grisez

PUF, Collection Éducation et société, 290 p.
Code ISBN: 978-2-13-083639-1
Lien vers l'éditeur

Le secteur d'enseignement privé sous contrat prend en charge 17,6 % des élèves du primaire et du secondaire, soit plus de deux millions d’élèves. Il accueille deux enfants sur cinq au cours de leur scolarité. À Paris, l’enseignement catholique sous contrat scolarise plus de 80 000 élèves, soit 23 % des élèves parisiens (rentrée 2021).

L’attachement des familles aux écoles catholiques et leur importance numérique ont constitué deux éléments motivant l’étude de leur mode de socialisation, auxquels s’ajoute un troisième : l’intérêt pour leur « caractère propre ». Chaque école promeut un projet éducatif fondé sur l'Évangile imbriquant apprentissages, connaissances, valeurs et vérités. 

L'ouvrage propose de rendre compte de la socialisation des enfants dans ce type d’établissement, c’est-à-dire de la façon dont ils sont formés et transformés par l’institution. Une école primaire privée catholique sous contrat, dans un quartier privilégié, a été choisie pour mener une enquête de terrain. L'ouvrage analyse le processus de socialisation des enfants entre école, famille, paroisse et groupe de pairs. Il décrit la construction en train de se faire de dispositions socialement différenciées et différenciatrices. Le terme dispositions recouvre ici les façons d'être, de faire, de voir le monde, comme les inclinaisons à agir de telle ou telle manière ou de ressentir les choses. 

D’octobre 2019 à mars 2020, l'auteure a mené un travail ethnographique mêlant observations, entretiens et questionnaires, au contact de tous les aspects de la vie scolaire : classes, cour de récréation, cantine, séances de sport et sorties, mais aussi catéchèse et célébrations religieuses. Au total, 214 heures d’observation et plusieurs centaines de pages de journal de terrain ont été saisies.

L'ouvrage vise à contribuer à la sociologie de l’école, des styles éducatifs parentaux et de la différenciation
sociale durant l’enfance, en se focalisant sur un contexte de socialisation spécifique, celui de l’école catholique, et un milieu particulier, celui des classes supérieures à fort capital culturel et économique.
Une question a guidé l’enquête : quel type de personne l’école et les parents visent-t-ils à former, par quels moyens, et y parviennent-ils ?
Ce travail scientifique a pour ambition d'étudier ce que le dispositif "école catholique" fait aux enfants, mais également ce que les enfants font dans et de ce dispositif.
Les concepts d’éducation globale, de contrôle social, de coordination, de disposition et d’épreuve de socialisation sont mobilisés.

Il est à noter que les travaux sociologiques sur ce type d'établissements sont largement moins nombreux que ceux consacrés à l'école publique. 

En conclusion l'auteure évalue un dispositif socialisateur des parents et de l'école particulièrement puissant et efficace. Quand les enfants quittent l'école primaire, ils ont acquis à la fois des dispositions valorisées sur le plan scolaire et des compétences relationnelles qui leur permettent de vivre dans une société de pairs partageant un même statut social. On remarque leur capacité à adapter leur attitude aux situations et à l’adulte référent, selon la légitimité qu’ils accordent à l’activité qui leur est proposée et à la personne qui l’encadre. Ils développent un statut collectif élevé et un sens de leur position privilégiée. Ils ont de grandes ambitions pour leur futur et un sens social qui leur permet de se repérer dans le monde.  

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, December 1st 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1, St-Thomas-d'Aquin)

The Politics of Nationhood:
A Theory of Diversity Culture in the Contemporary United States

Mitchell L. Stevens

Professor, Stanford Graduate School of Education

The idea that ethno-racial and cultural diversity is a positive attribute in organizational life has become deeply divisive in contemporary US culture.

Elites in many institutional domains of US society — higher education, tech, corporate America and the Democratic Party — perform strong commitment to the diversity idea.

Yet diversity also engenders fierce opposition among cultural and political conservatives.

Sociologists have amply investigated the rise of the diversity idea but have little explanation for the strong emotions and costly activism it engenders across the political spectrum.

Drawing on institutional theory, political-historical sociology, cultural theory, and the sociologies of nationalism and religion, my coauthors and I develop a syncretic theory of diversity culture as a strand of American civil religion: an ongoing tradition of practice and discourse about who constitutes the American nation.

Developed initially among academic elites in the 1970s, diversity culture has sought to extend the idea of e pluribus unum to explicitly include people who are not white.

While obvious to many, the hegemony of this idea has never been absolute, and is increasingly challenged by populist movements anchored in enduring traditions of racial hierarchy. 

About The Pathways Network

Please Register Here. Thank You

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, November 24th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room F. Goguel (27, St Guillaume)

Displacing Refugees: Resettlement and the Reconstitution of Families
Molly Fee

Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Sociology
Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Sociologists traditionally use integration as the framework for studying the benefits and shortcomings of refugee resettlement, which is considered a durable solution for forced migrants.

This paper problematizes dominant narratives of resettlement as a time of integration and a solution to displacement.

Based on over one thousand hours of ethnographic fieldwork and 102 interviews with refugees and services providers in two U.S. cities, I show how displacement extends through initial resettlement.
By using families as the unit of analysis, this paper demonstrates how the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program reconstitutes kinship structures in three distinct ways,
 1) by prolonging earlier separations caused by forced migration,
 2) by creating new separations that become difficult to rectify, and
 3) by bringing together outdated family units.
Consequently, resettlement engenders social, emotional, and economic consequences that are further disruptive to refugees’ lives.

This paper offers a novel framework for understanding the early stages of a refugee's resettlement. I center refugees’ experiences to make visible all of the tensions caused by this humanitarian program. By focusing on how resettlement reconstitutes refugee families, I contribute to the scholarship on immigrant families and advance sociological understandings of displacement.

Please Register Here

The Center for Research on Social Inequalities (CRIS) at Sciences Po invites applications for two three-year PhD fellowships within the remit of the ERC project: A Social Demography of Widowhood across Ageing Societies.

This ground-breaking research moves beyond the state-of-the-art in at least four ways to establish a social demography of widowhood.
The foundation of the project lies in an innovative conceptual and methodological approach to the risk and vulnerability to widowhood. While risk aims at the probability and duration of widowhood, vulnerability focuses on its mental health and economic consequences. Current assessments of widowhood effects are limited to change in wellbeing directly after bereavement with a special focus on unexpected deaths. However, the most prevalent scenario entails a process of terminal health decline in the years before death. The consequences of the often neglected longer process of expected widowhood may be larger than the shorter process of unexpected widowhood.
Three ground-breaking pillars build on risk and vulnerability to examine social inequalities by socioeconomic status, race-ethnicity and nativity, social support networks, gender and age, as well as country differences and change over time.
High-quality cross-sectional and longitudinal data sources will be harmonized and applied to an advanced set of statistical methods for up to 60 ageing countries varying in demographic trends and welfare systems from 1985 with projections to 2050. A social demography of widowhood will supplement fragmented evidence with systematic and comprehensive estimates on risk and vulnerability, provide insights into the challenges facing a growing widowed population and their family members, and facilitate new research on sustainable pension and elder care systems.

Two openings:

• the risk of widowhood
• the vulnerability to widowhood.

Applicants should specify whether they are applying to the position focused on the risk or the vulnerability of widowhood. It is expected that the successful applicants will contribute to research on how the risk or vulnerability to widowhood varies across social groups and across countries. Interested persons are asked to refer to the project proposals for more information and contact Zachary Van Winkle (zachary.vanwinkle@sciencespo.fr) with any questions.

Requirements:
- Master’s degree in sociology, demography, economics, gerontology or a related field,
- Background or strong interest in family sociology and/or demography as well as quantitative methods,
- Previous experience with cross-sectional and/or longitudinal data preparation and analysis in Stata, R or similar
- Ability to work independently and collaboratively
- Excellent English language skills

Start date September 1st, 2024, on the Sciences Po Campus (Paris Saint-Thomas-d'Aquin).

Please download the complete job description and application procedure here (pdf, 266 ko)

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, November 17th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room Salle du Conseil (13, Université)

The Principle of Dynastic Succession in Wealth Transmission

Nhat An Trinh
Research Officer
Institute for New Economic Thinking
Department of Social Policy and Intervention
Nuffield College, University of Oxford

Mounting research documents that wealth strongly persists across generations. Inheritances and inter-vivo gifts from parents to children are key contributors to this persistence. Intergenerational transfers are yet not only made unequally between families. It has been shown that a substantial share of intergenerational transfers is also made unequally within families.

In this study, we address this puzzle of unequal division and empirically investigate the distribution of intergenerational transfers through the lens of what we call the ‘principle of dynastic succession’.
This principle states that intergenerational transfers are made such that the family and its wealth are carried on into the long-lasting future, leading to unequal division.
Analyzing administrative data from the German inheritance and gift tax register (2007-2020), we argue that the principle is particularly salient in the presence of structuring assets (e.g. family business) and that its application varies along the estate distribution.
Going beyond individual parent-child transactional relationships, the principle of dynastic succession allows to link intra-familial disparities to long-term persistence in overall wealth inequality more broadly. Thereby, it sheds light on a so far neglected mechanism through which the family generates inequalities both within and between generations.

Please Register Here

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, November 10th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Room K008 (1 St Thomas)

The Changing and Uneven Landscape of Gender Gaps in STEM

Joseph Cimpian
Professor of Economics and Education Policy, New York University

Gender disparities in science, technology, engireering and mathematics (STEM) college majors have received substantial attention, with varying gender gaps across fields.
While biology and mathematics approach a 1-to-1 male-to-female ratio, physics, engineering, and computer science (PECS) remain at a 4-to-1 gap.

This talk explores potential causes and solutions for the PECS gender disparity.

Surprisingly, low-achieving men outnumber women in PECS, which cannot be easily explained by student-level factors suggested in the literature. With this background, we turn to understanding the role of institutions in perpetuating or closing gender gaps.

Analyzing a near census of 34 million U.S. Bachelor’s degrees awarded from 2002 to 2022 reveals considerable disparities across institutions. Schools serving lower-achieving students witness a widening PECS male-to-female ratio, reaching 7:1, while those with higher-achieving students narrow the gap to below 2:1.

Despite accounting for key student-level factors including prior achievement and majoring intentions, institutional differences persist, emphasizing the need for interventions in institutions serving lower-achieving students, where men dominate PECS programs.

Please register here!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, October 20th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, Salle du Conseil (13 Rue de l'Université)

The Long Crisis of Black Masculinity in Racial Capitalism

Jordanna Matlon
Associate Professor, School of International Service, American University

In this talk, Matlon examines competing constructions of modern manhood in the West African metropolis of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.

Engaging the histories, representational repertoires, and performative identities of men in Abidjan and across the Black Atlantic, Jordanna Matlon shows how French colonial legacies and media tropes of Blackness root masculine identity and value within labor, consumerism, and commodification.

Matlon provides a broad chronological and transatlantic account of Black masculinity that culminates in an ethnography of the livelihoods and lifestyles of vendeurs ambulants, underemployed men in Abidjan's informal economy. In doing so, Matlon demonstrates how men's subjectivities are formed in dialectical tension by and through hegemonic ideologies of race and patriarchy.

Mandatory Registration. Thank You !

Diverging pathways:
the effects of initial legal status on immigrant socioeconomic and residential outcomes in France

Tianjian Lai (University of Chicago), Haley McAvay (University of York), Mirna Safi
European Sociological Review, 28 September, doi: 10.1093/esr/jcad047

Read or download the Paper (available in Open Access)

This article provides an empirical assessment of the effects of migrants’ initial legal status on socioeconomic attainment focusing on three outcomes:

• household income, 
• neighbourhood disadvantage, 
• concentration in immigrant neighbourhoods.

The regulation of migration in modern nation-states entails the sorting of newcomers along legal lines of demarcation that define residency status. These legal distinctions upon arrival grant or deny rights and opportunities and determine access to citizenship and socioeconomic resources. Certain legal statuses allow migrants to enter the labour market immediately (i.e. work permits), while others provide a faster track to citizenship (i.e. marriage permits). These classifications further shape the degree of inclusion and reception that immigrants encounter.

In this article, we draw on a unique, large-sample data source from France, the Trajectories and Origins (TeO) survey, which includes rare information on migrants’ first residency permit and a wide range of premigration variables. We focus on five initial permit categories - refugee, student, worker, spouse of a French citizen, and family reunification - and measure their impact on socioeconomic attainment and residential attainment as reported at the time of the survey.
Our empirical strategy seeks to disentangle the effects of legal status from confounding factors implementing a series of different methodological approaches.

The results first show that immigrants’ outcomes vary by their initial legal status. Migrants who arrived in France with student, worker and French spouse permits tend to be more advantaged in socioeconomic outcomes, while refugees face greater disadvantage. Yet, some of these disparities disappear once premigration variables and/or individual heterogeneity are accounted for. These results suggest that most initial legal status categories are stratified prior to arrival and not stratifiers in the destination country per se. However, we consistently measure a negative effect of refugee status on respondents’ income across diverse model specifications, suggesting a lasting impact of this legal category.

Linking Wealth and Power: Direct Political Action of Corporate Elites and the Wealthiest Capitalist Families in the United States and Germany

Lukas Arndt (PhD, Sciences Po - CRIS & MPIfG Cologne)

CRIS Papers n° 2023-1, October 2023, 32p., doi 10.25647/osc.papers.05

Download the Paper (Hal Sciences Po)
Download the Appendix (Data.sciencespo)

As Thomas Piketty argued, wealth concentration at the top of the distribution in many economically developed countries might lead to continuous concentration of large fortunes among a few super-rich families. At the same time, what he calls “superstar managers” receive astronomical salaries.

Do individuals with power in the economy translate it into political power in capitalist democracies? And if yes, what do these individuals want to achieve?
Are they just pragmatically using access to influence economic policy, maximizing their own profits? Or do they use their economic power to advocate for an ideological agenda that might be different from the rest of the voters?

This study inquires whether two groups of individuals with power in the economy directly translate it into political power in capitalist democracies: The corporate elite and super-rich capitalist families.

It does so by analyzing three potential “avenues of influence”: Lobbying or party donations through controlled firms, and individual party donations.

Shareholders and managers of the largest German and US firms are analyzed.

First, 6,227 members of US and German families with large assets are identified.
Second, the national corporate elites are identified.
Individual and firm data is then used to predict lobbying and party contribution in 2019-2021 with logistic regressions.

Results suggest that direct political action on the part of the super-rich and the corporate elite is much more prevalent and more ideological in the United States than in Germany. If they engage at all,
the super-rich tend to be a very conservative group who use all three avenues of influence complementarily. However, the magnitude of super-rich and elite money does not favor the idea of an “oligarchy” in either of the two countries, at least not through these direct and visible channels.

Inequality and the Environment Symposium for Early-career Researchers

Organized by Sciences Po's Center for Research on social InequalitieS, in partnership with the
World Inequality Lab at the Paris School of Economics

Co-Chairs: Lucas Chancel (Sciences Po - CRIS and Harvard Kennedy School)
Carlo Barone (Sciences Po - CRIS)
Committee: Carlo Barone, Lucas Chancel, Eloi Laurent, Allison Rovny

Rising inequality and environmental degradation are two critical challenges of our time. Our knowledge about the interplay between socio-economic inequality, environmental degradation, and environmental policies remains limited. The literature on inequality and the environment presents various conceptual, empirical, and theoretical gaps hindering societies’ ability to effectively address these issues.
Important questions remain unanswered, such as: How can governments address inequality while averting the exacerbation of climate and biodiversity crises? Which welfare regimes could be compatible with deep decarbonization? What types of political coalitions can support these changes? What role have income and wealth inequality played in accelerating or slowing environmental degradation?

From a methodological standpoint, the basic measurement and analysis of environmental inequalities is a complex task. How can emission inequalities between individuals and social groups be systematically measured? How can the multidimensional distributional impacts of environmental regulations be tracked and explained? How to accurately measure and understand the intersection of social class, gender, racial, and spatial inequalities to better explain observed pollution and depollution patterns?

This symposium aims to present, discuss, and foster innovative approaches to social science research on environmental inequality across three broad research streams :

• Inequalities in the impacts of environmental degradation;
• Inequalities in contributions to environmental damage; 
• Inequalities in capacities to act against pollution or to cope with environmental policies.

We invite PhD students and Post-Docs from economics, sociology, psychology, political science, geography, demography, history, environmental sciences and related fields to submit their papers and participate in the symposium. The event will take place on one day at Sciences Po (Paris). This symposium provides a platform to present groundbreaking research, engage in discussions, and collaborate with other researchers. The participation in person is highly encouraged to facilitate scientific exchanges among researchers, but online participation is possible particularly for researchers from outside Europe.

Please download here the submission guidelines.

Deadline for Submission: November 1st, 2023.

For queries, contact : lucas.chancel@sciencespo.fr and carlo.barone@sciencespo.fr.

Join us in this endeavor to bridge the knowledge gap and foster the outstanding of social science research on inequality and the environment. We look forward to your contributions and insights!

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, September 29th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, 27, rue Saint-Guillaume, room François Goguel

Immigration News Remix: Unraveling Online Distortions of Mainstream Narratives

Katharina Tittel (PhD Student, Sciences Po - CRIS & Medialab)

Media studies have long scrutinized the portrayal of migration, primarily within traditional newspapers, and assuming a top-down influence of elite-produced news frames on audiences. However, social media has disrupted these dynamics, challenging conventional media effects theories and raising questions about the roles of political actors, citizens, and civil society organizations in content distribution and framing effects. Which contents actually circulate, by whom, and how are they shared?

This research diverges from past content-centric studies, focusing on the circulation of news content online. It relies on digital-trace data from Facebook shares of immigration-related articles from mainstream newspapers in Germany and France from 2015 to 2019, as well as the sources shared in French immigration-related tweets from 2020 to 2021, using natural language processing, manual source classification, and combining the Twitter dataset with Chapel Hill expert survey data to estimate users' ideological leanings.

The analysis reveals that far-right political activists, along with anti-immigrant civil society groups, not only extensively share content from far-right outlets but also remix and recontextualize mainstream news, selectively emphasizing elements that further their agendas. In contrast, centrist and leftist voices, as well as refugee solidarity groups, exhibit markedly reduced engagement.

In the current political climate marked by the ascent of far-right movements in Germany and France, this research exposes how ostensibly "neutral" immigration news can become instruments to advance far-right political agendas. The observed silence among centrist and leftist groups further invites contemplation regarding how such behaviors may inadvertently leave the online space to extremist voices.

Just as organizations and scholars increasingly discuss the challenges of "fake news" and the necessity of fact-checking, this study underscores the urgency of addressing not only the spread of factually false information but also the subtler transformations of factually true mainstream news narratives.

Mandatory Registration. Thank You !

CRIS Scientific Seminar 2023-2024

Friday, September 15th 2023, 11:30 am
Sciences Po, 1 place St-Thomas, room K008

Assessing responsibility for GHG emissions

Antonin Pottier (Maître de Conférences, EHESS - CIRED)

Numerous assessments of the responsibility for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions already exist in the literature. Assessing responsiblity however assumes a responsibility principle, that is a connection between emissions and the social entities deemed responsible for them. While the responsibility principles for countries have long been debated, the recent focus of the literature on individual emissions has relied only on consumer responsibility. I will highlight that the problem is analogous for both countries and individual: measuring emissions presupposes a perspective on the responsibility of agents.

I will then present two recent empirical studies that assess GHG emissions inequality in France. These studies are founded on contrasting responsibility principles: downstream responsibility, also known as income-based accounting, and upstream or consumer responsibility, often referred to as consumption-based accounting. Additionally, I will delve into a comprehensive discussion of the limitations of our data when it comes to evaluating consumption-based emissions, often referred to as the carbon footprint.

Mandatory Registration. Thank You !