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Institutional trust among young people in Europe. What are the effects of public policy?
Since the beginning of the economic crisis, radical political parties have attracted more and more votes all over Europe, particularly among young people. And those who vote for these parties, whether they are right or left-wing, all have low levels of political trust, particularly in institutions. Yet the level of institutional trust among young people differs substantially from one country to another in Europe. How can we account for these differences? In this article we argue that they are due to public policy. Based on multilevel analysis of the European Social Survey data, we demonstrate that the more inclusive policies for economic citizenship are and/or the more individualized policies for social citizenship are, then the more trust young people demonstrate toward institutions.

Organizing the work of temp workers without job contracts in the French civil service: Daily management of uncertainty and moral concernsThough we are still a long way from having identified all forms of temp work, we know that many private and public-sector organizations use this type of labor. This article studies a type of temporary employment found in France's local civil service sector, adopting the perspective of female employees in a human resources department whose job is to manage female temporary workers called upon to perform low-skilled tasks. The HR employees, called “managers” and in charge of organizing this work force on a daily basis, are caught up in multiple tensions that create instability, discomfort, and discontent, a situation they are constantly trying to overcome. Called upon to mobilize the temporary workers and keep them loyal without being able to really hire them, constrained to follow rules and in some cases compensate for their absence, the managers play a composite role of employment intermediary and legal intermediary. In order to reduce the daily uncertainty of their own work while trying to endow their practices with morally acceptable meaning, these female managers of a female temporary work force use several rationales for action in their interactions with the workers, inventing rules to frame and enable them to perform their activities, activities that fall somewhere between mutual commitments and making do in the moment, moving to attribute responsibilities to the workers and keeping their distance from them.

Objectivity under scrutiny: Analysis of a randomized controlled trial of job-seeker support programs in FranceThis article examines the objectivity of this method of evaluation and its effects on public policy management. I study the different phases of the trial (from its design to the results it produced and how these were used) and analyze them in light of the institutional logics at play when the programs were implemented. Given that these results are not a measure but a product of conventions and given that, as they react to the evaluation, the actors involved transform the object being observed, the objectivity of randomization is in fact shown to be relative. Analyzing how the results were used partially, in both senses of the term, offers evidence of the ways in which quantitative data are used to legitimate public policy.