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The 2017 replication of part of a 2001 survey allows for studying how personal networks in France evolved over the sixteen intervening years. The findings are convergent with those of comparable studies done in other countries, particularly the United States. Whereas a range of authors in the 2000s predicted major changes in personal networks, those networks turned out to be remarkably stable in both composition and structure. There was no observed reduction in size, and no major changes in composition (proportions of family, colleagues, neighbors, and other personal relations). However, certain changes parallel to those occurring in French society (higher educational attainment, later age at first birth, peri-urbanization, etc.) were observed: a change in the contexts in which people in the 18-30 and over 60 age brackets meet people; increased homogeneity of the networks of the most educated categories; and lower network density in rural areas.

Half a century after Roger Girod introduced the concept of “counter-mobility”, this article seeks to renew and empirically asses its relevance to sociology of social stratification. Drawing one Formation et Qualification Professionnelle surveys (FQP) (Training and Vocational Skills Survey) (Insee, 1970, 1993, 2003 and 2014-2015), the study confirms the persistence of the “counter-mobility” phenomenon in the French context. The data show that in 2015 nearly one in four socially mobile men and one in five socially mobile women, through their career mobility, actually return to their class of social origin, after having only temporarily moved away from it during their first job. Counter-mobile individuals, most of whom are less educated than individuals who never left their class of social origin and fewer of whom come from homogamous families, appear to have social characteristics that differentiate them from immobile individuals of the same social background. These findings suggest that we should analyze different paths and time frames of social reproduction in terms of the class fractions they define and the gender inequalities they exacerbate.

From December 2010 to April 2011, mobilizations on the issue of shale gas in France multiplied, helping to get what would become a major environmental problem onto the media agenda and later the government agenda, and pushing the government to pass a ban on hydraulic fracturing, the technique required to extract this particular hydrocarbon. However, that linear reading of events does not fully account for what attentive empirical observation of more discrete phenomena reveals: a chaotic trajectory for the issue that played out over more than a year in numerous micro-, fractured, and often conflictual spaces of debate. This article studies the singular dynamics of getting the shale gas issue “on the agenda” in France and of how it was dealt with in a range of different debate spheres, an approach that seems particularly effective for reflecting the fragmented, agonistic, combative functioning of the bureaucratic, media, industrial, and activist systems involved. We show, on the one hand, how the diversity of those dynamics worked to ensure that the issue's career would be a chaotic one, alternating between confidential confinement and publicity, “tragic” definitions of the public problem that had the effect of rendering it intractable and « domesticated » definitions aimed to make it tractable, and appropriation and circumvention of the issue; on the other, how statements of the problem and positions were formulated during the period, together with the coalitions behind them that would clash during the media storm of early 2011.

Several contrasting hypotheses have been formulated about the potential effects of bilingualism on children's cognitive development and their educational success. Yet, few studies empirically test such hypotheses, particularly outside of the US context. In this paper, we use a recent, nationally representative survey of adults living in France (the FQP surveys – Formation et Qualification Professionnelle, Professional Training and Qualification) to question whether being exposed to a bilingual environment (considering both regional and foreign languages) at age 5 is correlated to subsequent educational trajectories. Furthermore, we explore whether characteristics linked to the heterogeneity of the bilingual population modify these associations. We find that early bilingual exposure is negatively associated with several educational outcomes, particularly towards the end of the educational trajectory. Negative correlations are especially striking among those from a North African background, and less marked among those of Southern European origins, but also characterise regional language speakers. This disadvantage is more prominent among those from advantaged backgrounds, compared to those from more disadvantaged backgrounds. Our results highlight the importance of studying correlations between early bilingual exposure and academic subsequent trajectories in light of the heterogeneity of bilingual pupils' backgrounds.