Contenu du sommaire : Ancrages/Brassages

The Competence of Hibridity. Chicago in the Tropics or the Heuristic Virtues of Hibridity. North American searchers who have studied Latin America and the Carib have traditionally analysed them in terms of hibridity, racial continuum and interethnic harmony, thus pointing out the contrast between bipolarisation and conflictuality associated to the United States. Yet this delighted vision of the South of the continent forgets that Latin American and Caribbean societies rely on a socio-racial organization inherited from slavery and hides the everlasting racial discriminations which have now been denounced through the introduction of a multiculturalism inspired by positive discrimination, which attributes specific rights to Afro-American populations. Through the eyes of the searchers of the Chicago tradition (especially Park, Hughes and Goffman), I will analyze the range of their concept reinterpreted from the South of the continent and the transition mechanisms – if transition there is – from hibridity to multiculturalism in Latin America and the Carib, studying more particularly the examples of Brazil and Columbia.

Canadian Multicultural Policies : Citizenship, Institutional Adjustments and Equality. Multiculturalism as a policy has been implemented in Canada for nearly thirty years. What kind of influence did it have on the Canadian society? Which criticisms did it raise? Which unexpected effects did it have? And what kind of adjustments has been introduced? In this paper, I will try and evaluate a policy which has been considered quite often in France as pertaining only to the North-American context, and as being therefore irrelevant with regard to the French Republican one. I will attempt to describe the concrete measures related to this policy within three different social areas: the voluntary associations representing ethnic minorities, the school system which plays a central role in terms of “management” of ethnic and religious diversity, and the organization of labor, taking as an example the implementation in Quebec of equity measures meant to insure an equal access to job opportunities.

Changes in the Identity of Managers related to International Mobility. A Case Study of an Oil Company. The forms of control over managers in multinational firms are more and more based on a process of socialization which consists of the development and strengthening of a company culture through the international mobility, career management and the performance related pay. In contrast to the simplified idea that the process of socialization is the same in each country, the study founds that managers experience a large variation in its form in different countries. When a manager is in an international context there is a tension between his previous socialization, his job and the social role he has to play. At an individual level being an international manager not only involves intercultural interactions, but further it involves playing different roles “changing your ethnicity” according to the culture in which you find yourself. However this “cultural and ethnic roles” are always a mix of various influences in an manager life but can be used as a tool to obtain recognition within the company.

Industrial Migratory Movement and Delocalizations in Mauritius. The intrinsic vocation of the island of Mauritius to become a center of redistribution of goods in the ‘world economy' is inextricably linked to its economic and social history, and to the way in which, from the very start of the build up of the population of Mauritius, multiple indigenous cultural references were created without attaching exclusive importance to territoriality. Throughout the history of Mauritius, from the time of the development of capitalist trade and industrial capitalism, right up to modern day globalization, the same type of socioeconomic integration has presided over local development. The influence of more or less advanced liberal economics determined the development of a trade and small plantation economy. This form of integration led to a common pattern of settling in Mauritius, backed up by the oath of allegiance to the British colony. This is the reason why the tendency to emigrate, which appeared early on, in the 1960s, has contributed to the continuation of the economic balance of Mauritius. Beyond the ideologies, the social relations which are established involve legal, religious and political references. They are characterized by the fundamental ambivalence of attachment to the ‘land'of the nation: an ambivalent differentiation between country of family origin and country of birth. This duality, which lies at the heart of Mauritian nationhood, reveals the way in which spatial mobility interacts with the processes of internal differentiation, thus explaining the structuring of the urban elite and the emergence of a middle class since the obtaining of Independence in 1968.

Professional Constructions and the Struggle for Social Ranking in Egypt. The Example of “Applied Technical Professions”. The issues at stake in the process of institutionalization of a “profession” vary from one country to another, according to historical heritage and social context. The gap between the principles on which statisticians base occupational classifications (for the sake of employment policies) and mechanisms founding the construction of social identities, is here exemplified by an Egyptian case, through a group whose identity corresponds only partly to that of our technicians : the way in which the socalled “tatbîqiyîn” strive, with the help of their union, to assert their quality as professionals, reveals the specific practical and symbolic dimensions of the struggle for social ranking which is going on in the Egyptian society.