Suchergebnisse

The restructuring of the Quebecois organization Emploi-Quebec (including its new use of a single window) is used to demonstrate that the transformation of a governmental agency necessarily changes the structure of public political networks formed around social actors who have close ties to the institutions being affected. It is held that the network currently being created around Emploi-Quebec includes persons previously employed by the federal & provincial labor & manpower policy networks, as well as grassroots social groups who play a major role in efforts to combat poverty. Despite the important participation of these individuals, no consensus has been reached about the policies of Emploi-Quebec, leaving the organization without any immediate goals. Emploi-Quebec's failure to act independently is deemed a bad sign for the future of similar solidarity state organizations. 1 Table. Adapted from the source document.

Ricardo Rocha and Hermes Martinez — Poverty, crime and growth in Colombia : Regional disparities
This article entails a two-stage empirical study of the relationships between poverty, criminality and economic growth, on the basis of literature and statistical analysis, from departmental data covering the 1981-1998 period. Privations suffered by the population and reduced opportunity costs resulting from low budgetary provisions favour criminality, which in turn has negative repercussions on the saving-investment process. The results obtained suggest that despite the development of drug trafficking, the risks of increasing poverty and the loss of growth would have been higher if Columbia had not experienced a parallel economic and social progress. The results also bring to light the importance of political goodwill in improving growth.

Resistance and self-destruction in apartheid America.
The American debate on inner-city poverty has veered towards personal value judgements loaded with racial connotations and suffused with puritan thinking. Reacting to the accusatory-style of discourses justifying the persistence of urban poverty by holding the victim responsible, liberal intellectuals commit the opposite error of glorifying the poor with the status of "spotless victim". This type of analysis consequently glosses over the destructive power of American-style apartheid, ignoring the mecha-nisms that generate and reproduce the daily suffering of inner-city dwellers. Analyzing data gathered over four years of participant observation in an East-Harlem Puertorican community of crack-dealers, the author sets out the details of everyclay violence as well as the humiliating experiences of those seeking to participate in the legal job market. The dealers, drug-addicts and criminals frequented by the author manifest their opposition and resistance to exploitation and social exclusion by celebrating "Street culture", thereby becoming the direct agents of their own and their community's destruction. The underground economy and drug-dealing thus offer an economic and cultural alternative to those excluded from the "American dream". The author focuses his analysis on violence connected with the dynamics of class, race and gender relations in a context marked by a shrinking public sector and a restructuring of industrial capital. An approach which looks at the problem of relations between individual actions, and historical, political and economic structural constraints reveals that urban apartheid in the United States reproduces the logic of the American dream.

Since the last decade several papers have tried to give a broad picture of the demographic transition process. All of them show a macro-demographic point of view which is very useful to establish the facts and to explore the basic mecanisms. Now micro-demographic analyses at a regional level have to relay them however, in order to pinpoint the deep motivations which brought the populations to modify their fertility pattern during the last 200 years. Among several factors associated with the demographic transition the cultural one (a very unprecise one) is more and more evoked by demographers.
This paper deals with a micro-demographic analysis of the history of the population in the Eastern part of Belgium, called the Basse-Meuse. With the help of quantitative and qualitative data, it tries to give a better understanding of the cultural context in which the demographic changes have taken place. The new demographic pattern appears to be associated with the great economic depression of the years 1870-1890, which created a deep fear of falling back again into the traditional poverty.
In other words, the demographic transition is part of a broader process of societal transition : a shift from a mass-poverty society to a relative mass-abundance society.

Yves Le Bonniec — Colombia : an uncertain bet
The recent Colombian attempt to ensure universal health insurance stems from a political conjuncture featuring social protection reform as solution to a serious political legitimacy crisis. Engaging in such a program have been impossible without this particular historical context, which draws the limits of the reform. The universalising process focuses on health insurance coverage to groups with no access to the contributory scheme. The implementation of this program reveals the ambiguities and constraints of a politically driven process that simultaneously aims at health protection and poverty reduction. Finally, by using structural analysis to several welfare regimes, one may outline the paradigm likely to shape the Colombian social protection system.

Putting Globalisation to Good Use, by Frédérique SACHWALD
Globalisation is often perceived as an anonymous force imposing change from the outside on various countries. Yet growing openness to trade and capital flows stems from choices made by governments, not only those of the rich countries, but also, and more recentïy, those of the poor ones, which have sought to take advantage of opportunities for integration into broader economie spheres. Globalisation forms part of the dynamics of modem economies, wnere innovation and the need for risk management have led governments to rely increasingly on market-based solutions. An analysis of two decades of globalisation shows that its impact is "filtered" by the national context, which itself reflects collective choices. National policies there-fore remain instrumental in leveraging the benéficial effects of globalisation and in anticipating and offsetting its negative effects. This is what emerges from the analysis of poverty reduction in the world and the evolution of inequalities in the industrialised countries.

Illicit activity linked to drug usage is seen in this research in terms of careers. Analysis of the interactions at the heart of deviant careers is placed alongside that of the social logic which produces a favourable climate for the diffusion and expansion of the drugs economy in poor areas. Using criminal records and interviews about careers from a study in the metropolitan area of Lille and in two communes of Hauts-de-Seine, France, the article examines two particular aspects : the characteristics of user careers and those of trafficking careers. The results underline the fact that the drug economy is not simply a means to 'turn off in the face of poverty, but that it also includes social and symbolic dimensions which are closely linked to the particular urban contexts studied.

Economie inequalities, old and new : the Czech experience.
During the period of transition, the question of economic inequalities takes on, for a variety of reasons, a new importance and a new significance. There are a good many people for whom economic reform has meant considerable financial difficulty, or indeed poverty. At the same time, privatization, the restitution of property and the existence of private business undertakings create wealth : consequently, these factors call into question the earlier option of "supposed equality", and their legitimacy is challenged. In conditions of newly acquired political freedom, the problem of inequality can be openly discussed, and handled as a political issue.
In the present article, the intention is to analyse the root causes of the existing situation, and to list recent changes as they are reflected in the various forms of the phenomenon of inequality. The first part deals with the legacy of communist society, which was a mixture of equality and privilege. The second has to do with the order of the market, which has to be defined more broadly then as a fundamentally homogeneous system, satisfied with replacing an inequitable equality with an equitable inequality. The third part is concerned with new sources of wealth and poverty, and their impact on society. Finally, there is a comparison of the changes that have objectively come about in the context of economic inequality, and the view which people have of them. In conclusion, there will be an analysis of the situation and specific problems of the Czech Republic in relation to the other countries of Eastern Europe.

Integration policies.

Within the framework of the « new » government line of thought which developed in the 1970s-1980s, the term « integration » is a label for the government's successive answers to « youth unemployment » and « new poverty » (« exclusion »). The present outline of a social history of « integration » attempts to bring out the many implications of these new ways of managing the lack of jobs, the keystone being « planning logic », to show how the figure of the « unemployable » person has come to replace that of someone simply out of work. The author begins by the analysis of the collective effort that went into making «integration» an «official problem», a category of government thinking which impressed itself in the arenas of politics, unions, CEOs, the media and science. He then seeks to show the debt owed by the successive « integration mechanisms », in particular to the conflicts within the political field and to the different categories of « professional integration workers », in other words, to bring out the inseparable political, professional and « ethical » stakes bound up with «integration». It ultimately appears that these « healing » policies and their successive transformations all combined to « aggravate the disease » they claimed to treat by contributing to the destabilization of salaried work.

Equallty, Fairness : The Ideologlcal Categories of Public Policy.
Noëlle Burgi [47-76].
Forced to recognize the inefficiency and failure of all the technical measures implemented to curb the new (inevitable?) poverty, mass long term unemployment, and the «impossible task of reinserting unqualified youth into the labor force» over the past decade, the French elites could not remain indifferent to the country's social disaster. By the end of the 80's, they came to the conclusion that the root of the problem was philosophical. Prior to any fiscal and social reform which would hopefully be both fair and efficient, time was therefore needed to redefine the notions of equality and fairness, and adapt them to the inflexible constraints of globalization. This, they hoped, would allow for social egoism to be dampened and would legitimize the sacrifices demanded from the «privileged», that is job holders. This paper engages in a close examination of the ideological discourse of these elites, and the assumptions underlying their (good) intentions. It seeks to make clear according to which ultimate criteria they now intend to produce fair social judgments. The quest proves to be elusive because this central issue is permanently brushed aside in favor of mere accounting preoccupations. But the analysis nonetheless bears fruit because it throws light on the limits of this kind of thinking, imprisoned within its categories, fascinated by the cage in which it locks up its own representations.