Contenu du sommaire : Se mesurer à la norme : travailleurs, institutions et analystes face à l'emploi

How to Measure Employment in Developing Economies ? The measurement of employment and unemployment is still subject to an intense debate because dissociating, in practice, the unemployed from those out of the labour force or determining who is adequately employed or not proves to be a very difficult conceptual and empirical exercise. These problems arise with particular acuity in the developing countries where the labor markets are characterised by an enormous heterogeneity of the situations the working-age population has to face. This article shows that the functioning of the labor markets in these countries would be better understood if the bipolar conceptions of employment such as work/non-work, formal/informal or self-employment/wage-earning were given up. It also suggests the use of additional indicators which would produce measurements of employment which make sense for these economies.

Employment Standards Challenged by the Dynamics of Self-Employment? A Franco-Brazilian Diachronic Comparative Analysis. This article compares the significance of self-entrepreneurship in France and individual micro-enterprises in Brazil in the redefinition of employment standards of both countries. Self-entrepreneurship employment forms are located at the intersection between independent, salaried and informal work. The first part of the article traces the socio-historical dynamics of these constitutive categories of employment regimes in both countries. From the previous socio-historical analysis and from both national public debates in the period of institutionalisation of self-entrepreneurship, the second part situates self-entrepreneurship in their national contexts. The third part presents a comparative sociology of self-entrepreneurs in France and Brazil based on portraits from both countries.

Norms of Employment, Hybridisation and Grey Zone among Helicopter Pilots in Brazil: The Challenges of Globalisation. This paper analyzes the nature of the transformations of labour in a globalising world. The concept of hybridisation highlights the specificity of the grey zone, taken as the result of the blurring of the norms of employment and the emergence of new forms of labour. The grey zone relates to the infringements made to law or to practices infiltrated in chinks in the law. The helicopter pilot profession in Brazil was chosen because it is embedded in a frame of rigid norms edicted by international institutions and in practices that tend locally to by-pass them. They reveal the challenges involved in the acceleration of the transformations due to globalisation.

Constructions of Employee Status in Mali. The Contract of Employment and the Re-socialisation of the State. This contribution proposes an approach to the contemporary transformations of the definitions of work and of employee status in Mali. Such social dynamics reveal new conceptions of politics and of individual autonomy. Observations were collected in Chinese companies employing local workers, and in Malian companies in the “formal” and “informal” sectors. Through increasing demands for a mode of employment based on a legal contract, Malian workers attribute new meanings to the Nation State, and base their social strategies on it. The State appears to play the role awarded to the elders in the former rural society, while the contract of employment is interpreted as a new social contract.

Reconfiguration of Work in Contemporary India: The Importance and Ambiguity of the Community Dimension. The contribution focuses on the fate of two poor, hard-working communities in northern and western India. At first glance they look different. Yet the argument is that they underwent a parallel evolution. They have continuously lost their stable or permanent positions in the field of work. This happened while at the same time major changes modified the consciousness and the practices of the community and religious life of the groups of workers. Although the two sets of changes are not directly related, there is a complicated and ambivalent relationship between them.

Cash Transfer Programs in Niger: A Major Misunderstanding!`/titreb Cash Transfer programs in Africa have recently become, after other continents, a privileged formula for humanitarian aid and development assistance. In Niger, a sum of money is unconditionally transferred directly to the beneficiary, identified as amongst the poorest of the poor. But this is typical of top-down development (“blueprint approach”). The present research, using qualitative methods, brings to light many unpredicted results of these programs when delivered to the target populations, and highlights the gaps between systems of standardized norms, imposed by these programs, as opposed to local norms and their diversity. It also captures how cash transfers are interpreted and dismembered by local populations, and demonstrates the capture strategies adopted by local elites, or other opportunistic uses of these programs.

Measuring the Capital of Mobility to Estimate the Intra-Urban and Sociodemographic Differentiations of Accessibility. The Case of the Metropolitan Area of Santiago de Chile. This article seeks to give a statistical reality to the concept of “capital of mobility”, based on a survey conducted in Santiago, Chile in 2009. It takes into account individual and collective components of the capital of mobility for daily and residential mobility, and migration. Several variables (gender, age, socio-professional categories and area inhabited) are analyzed to try to explain how social inequalities can be related, over and above accessibility, to what may be called the capital of mobility. The article shows the relevance of this concept, methodological difficulties in measuring it and the complexity of the different cases studied.

Brazil and China: The Contrast between Two Development Agendas. This article proposes to contrast the development agendas of Brazil and China, with reference to their trade. Using stylized facts, the article analyzes the capabilities of their governments in formulating long-term policies aimed at positioning the country in the global economy, while seeking to satisfy internal strategic interests. The article notes that the known risks for the Brazilian economy in its trade relations with China are largely the results of choices and management implemented by the respective governments in the national development processes according to the room for maneuver available.

The Quality of Educational Planning in Sub-Saharan Africa: Simulation Models. More than elsewhere, the issues covering educational planning are important in sub-Saharan Africa. Simulation models are the main tool of this type of planning. Most were designed or inspired by the World Bank or UNESCO. Yet, these models are too simplistic. This simplicity is a choice, although it is badly argued. The resulting vagueness is totally unacceptable, although imperceptible due to the simplicity of the models, which are not testable by facts. The simulation models are thus a sham and African educational systems continue to suffer grave imbalance in the allocation of resources. The conception of quality models, designed with a genuine concern to guide action, is possible and urgent.

Migration and Environment: Environmental Refugees in the Mediterranean. International migrations have always been a strategy adopted by human communities to respond to the deterioration of living conditions in their countries of origin. Currently, in a context of severe crises at the global level, the push factors of migration are increasingly taking a more multi-dimensional nature in which the environmental variable linked to the depletion of natural resources and climate change plays a significant role. This implies a strong increase in the share of environmental migrants within migratory flows and the need to recognize them as refugees. The issue of environmental migrants particularly affects the Mediterranean countries because they show high vulnerability and a poor adaptive capacity to the impacts of climate change. In addition, the Mediterranean region is a transition zone of migration flows from sub-Saharan Africa to the European countries, which in the future will become more consistent as a result of global warming.