Contenu du sommaire

Past research on the labor-market situation of immigrants' descendants has shown large ethno-racial inequalities in access to employment in France. However, few French studies focus specifically on ethno-racial inequalities in wages, and those that do generally conclude that such inequalities are either small or non-existent. Our study, based on a larger sample than those of previous ones (14 years of France's “Enquête Emploi en Continu” labor force surveys running from 2005 to 2018) and on distinct methodological choices (distinguishing children of one vs. two immigrant parents and including respondents” residential characteristics) questions that prevailing consensus, showing that ethno-racial inequalities in monthly and hourly wages are considerable, particularly to the detriment of individuals from Sub-Saharan Africa, France's Overseas Territories, and North Africa. Wage inequalities are also wider among men than women, and among descendants of two immigrant parents rather than one.

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.

Over the twentieth century, the ritual of getting married underwent major changes that in turn affected wedding seasonality. As the institution weakened, marriage became a ritual of couple personalization for those choosing it, and heavily based on esthetic issues. But since 2013, when same-sex marriage was legalized in France, have the dates chosen by same-sex couples followed the seasonality of different-sex couples? This article explores the atypical choices of marriage dates among same-sex couples, showing that it can be explained in part by the particular legal possibilities that marriage offers them. It also highlights considerable differences by gender: women's choice of atypical dates is more a matter of the month or season, whereas men's more often concerns the day of the week. This might be explained by women's motivations in connection with the legal possibilities afforded by marriage: female couples are more concerned than their male counterparts about access to adoption and establishing legal filiation for both partners. This can lead them to choose the date of their wedding ceremony to coincide with the moment when their parental project takes shape, whatever the season.

This study of transnational film exchange uses Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) to empirically construct a transnational field—an as-yet largely unexplored approach. While films that circulate beyond the borders of their home country represent a small proportion of worldwide movie production, what most distinguishes them from each other is how narrowly or widely they are diffused, and how diffusion differs by how closely the film is linked to international film festivals or, conversely, broad audience markets. The MCA also shows the importance of a film's country of origin for its transnational career, bringing to light the suggestive yet over-simplified idea that transnational film flows amount to little more than exports from a United States “center” towards peripheries.

One of the main concerns of a French prison guard over the course of their day is to delegate the task of socially reintegrating incarcerated persons and watching over their safety to other professionals. At night, however, the various contributors and providers of those services leave the prison premises, and this “dirty work”—as the guards generally refer to it—falls to those on night shift. When the “dirty work” can no longer be delegated to someone else, three, polarized attitudes to inmate guarding come to light. The first, which I call the strictly statutory attitude, amounts to simply refusing to assist inmates with reintegration in the interests of preserving oneself and one's sleep. In direct contrast to this kind of professional disengagement, we find what I'll call two different senses of mission. The first, which I call the security mission, involves the idea that the prison population is not vulnerable—another widely-held understanding—but dangerous, and that, left to their own devices, they would use the night hours to engage in illegal practices. In direct contrast, the second mission, that of “care” (a reference to the concept of “care” developed by English-language ethicists, psychologists, and feminists), consists in accepting to assist inmates with reintegration and protecting them when they are most vulnerable—during the night hours—as a way of morally ennobling the occupation of prison guard. As guards are not really trained in reintegrating inmates, they draw on their own socialization to find a response to the nocturnal fragility of incarcerated persons and situate themselves preferentially with regard to one of the three attitudes. I try to analyze some of the regularities that may be observed between prison guards' own social pasts and the attitudes they adopt on night shift.