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The ambivalences of dual family membership: Working class men and women. This article is a contribution to the study of contemporary family relationships. It considers that ego is both at the center of conjugal relations and of family relationships (especially with the family of origin). How does ego negotiate this dual belonging? Based on a qualitative survey of working class couples, we see that while men declare that they have no difficulty in conciliating conjugal autonomy and filial links, women feel guilty to claim some autonomy from their family of origin. However, the strong reproduction of family norms within the couple, for both men and women, seems to underline that this ideal of belonging without constraints generates for each partner yearnings which may be difficult to conciliate. These inner tensions and this desire to build oneself in reference to one's family experience without being trapped in it are one of the manifestations of the paradoxes of contemporary individualism.

The logic of gift-giving in family firm descent. The logic of gift-giving, theorized by Mauss in his famous essay, seems particularly interesting to highlight the logic which underlies the descent of family-owned firms. As the gift requires to be returned, the heritage would require to be retransmitted : by transfering to the children, one would return the gift to the parents. However, a survey of five Walloon family firms, representing up to four generations, leads us to moderate considerably the obligations system of the gift. Economic context, relational tensions, incompatibility of the firm with other projects, disenchantment of the statute, more open and autonomous future projects out of the family, result, in practice, in failures of the intergenerational cycle.

French “vocational degrees”: forms and plural meanings of “vocationalism” within university. This paper deals with the supply of French university vocational degrees (licences professionnelles), its characteristics and local elaboration process. Beyond the diversity of developments, several main forms of construction can be made out. They are strongly related to the previous supply of degrees and to the choices university faculty make in order to transform it. If the arguments in favour of the creation of vocational degrees are first of all based on the “renewal” and increase of professional skills required, the principle of new degrees three years after the French baccalauréat seem ultimately to be largely the outcome of internal university concerns. Thus, far from producing a common trend towards “vocationalism” within universities, the introduction of these degrees reveal plural forms of mobilisation and supply.

Has social segregation increased? The Paris metropolis between polarisation and social mix. The idea of an increase of social segregation that is a concern for disadvantaged groups has become conventional wisdom in the media, the political and the academic worlds. A detailed analysis of the spatial distribution of social categories in the Paris metropolis shows that the more intense segregation is that of upper classes, and it is increasing. Among lower class categories, blue collar workers come next, with an increased segregation also but decreasing numbers. Whereas the expanding middle categories and white collar workers have both a low degree of segregation and a decreasing one. These general trends result from spatial trends much more diverse than the predominant idea of dualization. Upper class areas are becoming more exclusive and are expanding. Working class areas experience diverse types of changes, where the increased concentration of unemployed and casual workers is a minority of cases but a worrying trend. For working classes and middle classes, socially mixed residential areas remain the most frequent modality, although the social fabric of these mixed areas is being threatened by the rapid rise of unemployment and casual labour affecting increasingly the middle classes themselves.

The 1999 census in France: reflections on practices of state mobilization. The population census, a state enterprise, is carried out by diverse individuals and groups, each invested with its specific level of socialisation with the census and perception of it. Contrary to the administration's planning, the implementation of the census on the field depends upon the relations between individuals who invest their different social resources, which contribute to shape the result. At the same time, the census mobilises social attributes of individuals, therefore engaging the relations that they have with the different social spaces under state control.